Sri Lanka is heading towards a rapid infrastructure development especially after the end of long lasted Elam war. Many construction projects already have been launched and significant numbers of projects are yet to be started. Among those, Road development represents a key section of the development process of country. There are several proposed Highways such as Colombo – Kandy, Hambanthota – Colombo and Colombo – Katunayaka highway which will form a sophisticated road network in Sri Lanka. Current records have shown that the number of vehicles circulating in Sri Lanka has been increased which has caused for traffic jams. Because of those facts a properly functioning high-tech traffic system is a must when deliberating the situation of country in five – ten years future.
When examining traffic systems, many different factors can be classified that lead to traffic collisions and casualties. Speed of vehicles is playing a major role of those factors and measuring it accurately is an enabling point for activities those are relevant to traffic controlling systems. In the present world various types of vehicle detection methods can be found such as Doppler-Radar mechanism, Global Navigation Satellite System based speed detection system, and Laser detectors and so on which are used in conjunction with road enforcement systems. But in Sri Lanka there is no proper mechanism or system to measure speeds and due to that reason number of accidents occurring on roads remains unacceptable high. It has come to a position to cease all high speed monitoring activities in the state because not having an appropriate mechanism. So the requirement of a new strategy for a traffic system has grown and speed measuring system should be introduced which is more reliable than current system and also suitable for Sri Lankan environment to reduce the number of incidences that put valuable human lives at a risk on roads.
The intention of proposed system of this project is to detect vehicle speeds, based on a video input received from a camera which should be placed near traffic flows. Final outcome of this project will provide a system to detect moving vehicle speeds in acceptable accuracy level by the use of highly customized image processing algorithms and overcome the weaknesses of current mechanism.