Electronic toll collection
Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) allows the collection of tolls without vehicles having to stop or slow down, thus avoiding the lines and delays associated with traditional collection through toll booths. The most common application worldwide has been to enable some lanes with electronic control at toll stations, combined with manual collection lanes, and the number of automatic positions depends on the number of users registered in the automatic debit system. Thanks to the fact that 100% of vehicles can be charged electronically, ETC has made it possible to grant urban highways to the private sector for construction and operation, as well as the introduction or improvement of urban toll collection as a tool to reduce car trips within congested city centers through the application of the economic concept of congestion pricing. The first global implementations of electronic urban tolling took place in the three main cities of Norway, Bergen (1986), Oslo (1990), and Trondheim (1991),[4] implemented with the aim of generating income for a public fund intended to finance new road projects in the urban area.
Between 2004 and 2005, in Santiago de Chile, the first systems in the world for electronic toll collection were implemented that cross the city's commercial center and as part of a system of concessioned urban highways (the Autopista Central, and the Autopista Costanera Norte "Autopista Costanera Norte (Santiago de Chile)"), with technology that allows for automatic control of all entries to the highway and charging for the distance traveled. Similar solutions had already been implemented in other cities, only in those cases the ETC was used on peripheral rings or highways to avoid passing through the city center. Toll collection by 100% electronic means has been used in Toronto, Canada since 1997 (Route 407 ETR), on several highways in Norway,[5] in Melbourne, Australia since 2000 (CityLink), and in Tel Aviv, Israel also in 2000 (Route 6).
The application of ETC to implement policies to regulate congestion is used on roads that provide access to the central area of the city using transmitters in cars, complemented by video cameras and digital character recognition technology (to fine violators). The application of congestion pricing has already been successfully implemented in several cities: Singapore in 1998, which made it possible to automate the first congestion pricing system implemented in the world in 1975, and whose access control was carried out manually (see Singapore congestion pricing); London in 2003 and expanded in 2007 (see London City Toll); and Stockholm in 2006 as a seven-month trial, and permanently from August 2007 (see Stockholm Congestion Tax).
Automatic violation monitoring
ITS-based solutions have been used very successfully in the area of road safety by allowing greater efficiency in police surveillance to control violators of traffic laws.[6] The two main applications are for speeding control and the control of vehicles crossing an intersection during the red light of the traffic light. In the city of São Paulo, automatic surveillance has also been used to control the rationing of road space by license plate numbers according to the day of the week (Portuguese: Rodízio veicular). The development of an integrated database at the national level is essential to ensure that fines reach the owners of the vehicles involved in the violation. Automatic fine systems have caused controversy among some users who allege loss of privacy. This situation is more controversial when the digital image of the offender is photographed from the front, since in addition to the license plate number, in many cases it is also possible to observe the occupants of the vehicle. However, common practice in Europe is for the photograph to be taken from the rear, to provide adequate privacy protection.[7].
In-vehicle emergency notification system
The eCall system embedded in the vehicle to notify a potential accident, automatically, to the emergency call service point (PSAP). In this way, the action of emergency services (police, ambulance, firefighters) can be carried out quickly and effectively. The application of this system has had several regulatory milestones and should be applied to new passenger cars from 2018. The deployment of eCall is based on technical standards (European standards, developed in the standardization organizations European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and European Committee for Standardization (CEN). In Spain the mirror organization is the Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification (AENOR).
A controversial issue is the protection of privacy, since thanks to this type of systems it is possible to know the location of a vehicle at a certain moment. Since there is usually a reasonably strong relationship between a vehicle and its driver, this would allow the position of a person to be established. This issue would violate people's privacy.