Mitsubishi Electric's Award-Winning Technology Helps Prevent Accidents at Major Intersection in Kentucky
CYPRESS, Calif.--May 20, 2002--A traffic monitoring project using Mitsubishi Electric technology was named as a "Best of ITS" award winner at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS) conference, held April 29-30, 2002 in Long Beach, Calif.
The TRIMARC (Traffic Response and Incident Management Assisting the River Cities) project, designed and operated by TRW for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and Indiana Department of Transportation, took top honors in the Research category.
TRIMARC won for its research of high incident intersections in Louisville, Ky. using an Auto Incident Recording System (AIRS), the unique system developed by Mitsubishi Electric engineers, which was introduced as the first of its kind ever deployed in the nation. TRW, working with Mitsubishi Electric Corp. in Japan, used this sound-activated video system to analyze accidents and near accidents.
As a result, Kentucky Transportation and City of Louisville engineers made intersection improvements that have led to a reduction of left-turn accidents. There were four left-turn accidents from the Brook Street ramp within the first 13 weeks of monitoring. Since the changes were made based on the data from AIRS, there has only been one accident of this type in the past 26 weeks.
The project competed with 75 programs in seven ITS categories. The awards were presented to the best ITS programs based on quantitative and qualitative performance, innovation, maturity of deployment, and integration into the transportation system.
TRIMARC is designed to improve safety, emergency response, travel-time and air quality within the greater Louisville/Southern Indiana area. TRIMARC is part of a national initiative to deploy Intelligent Transportation Systems to the 75 largest metropolitan areas in the nation.
About Mitsubishi Electric
With more than 80 years of experience in providing reliable, high-quality products to both corporate clients and general consumers all over the world, Mitsubishi Electric (FTSE:6503q.l) is a recognized world leader in the manufacture, marketing and sales of electrical and electronic equipment used in information processing and communications, space development and satellite communications, consumer electronics, industrial technology, energy, transportation and building equipment.
The company has operations in 35 countries and recorded consolidated group sales of more than $27.4 billion in the year ended March 31, 2002. For more information about Mitsubishi Electric, visit www.mitsubishielectric.com.
About TRW
TRW Inc. provides advanced technology products and services for the aerospace, information systems, and automotive markets. The company, which celebrated its 100th year of operations last year, had 2001 year-end sales of $16.4 billion. For more information, visit http://www.trw.com.
