• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
• /
• v.21 no.5
• /
• pp.67-77
• /
• 2022

An automatic freeway bus-only lane enforcement system was developed and assessed in a real-world environment. Observation of a bus-only lane on the Youngdong freeway, South Korea, revealed that approximately 99% of the vehicles violated the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane regulation. However, the current enforcement by the police not only exhibits a low enforcement rate, but also induces unnecessary safety and delay concerns. Since vehicles with six passengers or higher are permitted to enter freeway bus-only lanes, identifying the number of passengers in a vehicle is a core technology required for a freeway bus-only lane enforcement system. To that end, infrared cameras and the You Only Look Once (YOLOv5) deep learning algorithm were utilized. For assessment of the performance of the developed system, two environments, including a controlled test-bed and a real-world freeway, were used. As a result, the performances under the test-bed and the real-world environments exhibited 7% and 8% errors, respectively, indicating satisfactory outcomes. The developed system would contribute to an efficient freeway bus-only lane operations as well as eliminate safety and delay concerns caused by the current manual enforcement procedures.