Road safety is a constant commitment for A4 Holding Group and its concessionaire Autostrada Brescia Verona Vicenza Padova, which is always looking for new solutions to inform and warn drivers and truck drivers.
And it is precisely to the trucking sector that the new CB construction sites warning system is aimed, which will be installed by the month of June in the Soave – Verona Est section in the direction of Milan, near the construction site of the emergency lane.
CB Advisor, this is the name of the new alert system, is configured to automatically broadcast a pre-recorded, static warning radio message with cyclic repetition on the city band frequencies also known as Citizen’s band, or more commonly CB.
The CB Advisor system aims to alert drivers through a previously configured message about the approach of a construction site. The purpose is to prevent abrupt braking or sudden lane changes sometimes causing rear-end collisions and accidents. The message, transmitted by the system that is placed close to the event/worksite, has a propagation radius ranging from 3 to 5 kilometers and is repeated with regular frequency in two languages, Italian and English.
The CB Advisor system will be tested along the section of the A4 Brescia – Padova motorway included between Soave and Verona est, in the proximity of the current construction site, which in order to allow the construction of the emergency lane runs on the westbound lane, in direction of Milan. Truck drivers traveling on both carriageways, toward both Venice and Milan, will be alerted in advance of the presence of construction sites or anomalies, as well as the direction of the same, through the following message: “Warning! Roadworks ahead on the A4 motorway toward Milan between Soave and Verona est.”
Citizen’s band, which originated more than 70 years ago in the United States to enable citizens to use a radio frequency band for personal communication, is used today in Italy by several categories of drivers and professionals, including truck drivers. The channel chosen for message experimentation is No. 5, used specifically by truck and caravan drivers to exchange information on traffic and road conditions. It is estimated that truck drivers listening are more than 50 percent of the trucks in transit in Italy today.
The system in question has already been tested by a research team from the Texas Transportation Institute, which was able to verify how the messages positively affected both the speed of heavy vehicles and the lane chosen by haulers as they traveled approaching the reported event.
The adoption of CB Advisor is for the Company Brescia Verona Vicenza Padova a further step toward the safety of travelers, vehicles and goods. The goal is to keep drivers alert and ready to react properly to the presence of critical issues and construction sites by warning them in advance and allowing them to prepare, effectively reducing sudden and dangerous actions.
(A4 Holding S.p.A.)
