Enhancing incident response through driver information

With today´s traffic conditions there is an ever-increasing need to provide motorists with travel information and to be able to accurately locate individual vehicles when dealing with incidents. It is often quite difficult for motorists to pinpoint their location when a breakdown or accident occurs. This is particularly apparent on motorways when motorists use their mobile telephones instead of the emergency telephones. The police motorway controllers and motoring organisations then have the additional task of trying to locate motorists instead of relying upon automatic identification by the motorway emergency telephone system. Equally, the public find it difficult to accurately describe their location even on familiar routes, particularly in the heat of the moment. With the advent of satellite navigation, mobile telephones and advanced computing it is now possible to pinpoint motorists and provide telematics services to assist them. The subject of this paper is an integrated system that has been developed by the Automobile Association to provide these services. The system described is currently being deployed and offers an operational service to users