Thursday, November 19, 2009

ITD To Use Lasers To Avoid Car-Animal Accidents

When I heard that the Idaho Transportation Department was going to use lasers to try to keep animals from being hit by drivers on a stretch of US 95 near Moscow, the first thing I thought of was the sharks with lasers mounted on their heads from Austin Powers. Cool, they're going to equip game with lasers so they can shoot back at cars approaching them too fast! Uh, not quite. Turns out it's a system where lights flash when deer, elk, moose or other animals pass through laser beams focused along shoulders of the highway.

The system is supposed to give travelers an extra chance to avoid a collision. While it's not as cool as large animals that shoot laser beams, it's still pretty cool. I want some in my neighborhood.

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About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.