The recent acquisition of GovComm has given Synapse ITS dominance over the wrong-way detection market in Florida – success that the company hopes to replicate across the rest of the country.
“The GovComm system has redefined wrong-way vehicle detection in Florida,” said Dan Skites, Executive Vice President, Sales, Synapse ITS in a prepared press release. “This national rollout reflects our commitment to helping agencies across the U.S. adopt smarter, safer roadway systems. We’re proud to bring unmatched accuracy and reliability to communities nationwide — there’s no question that this technology will significantly reduce dangerous incidents.”
GovComm, and now Synapse ITS, is one of just six approved wrong-way detection vendors in Florida and has more than 400 deployments across the state (more than the five other vendors combined). Synapse ITS hopes to scale this success to the rest of the country – starting this week at ITS World Congress 2025 in Atlanta.
According to Craig Waltzer, General Manager of GovComm, false positives are the largest challenge with most wrong-way detection systems.
Strong winds, passing trucks and other environmental conditions can set off alerts when there is no actual event. Waltzer explains that this bombards traffic management centres with false positives to the point that many turn off the wrong-way detection during the day when the noise is most prevalent.
The GovComm ITS systems reduce false positives by optimising detection capabilities across multiple, high-resolution video feeds. Each wrong-way detection unit includes two cameras with four sensors – a visual and thermal lens facing the intersection and the highway – and a powerful NVIDIA chip that is capable of processing 40 frames per second. Software analyses four consecutive frames with two-pixel differentiation between one through four consecutive frames. This processing power allows the system to detect a wrong-way violation with a high-level of accuracy in eight-tenths of a second.
Once an incident has been confirmed, flashing lights can be turned on to warn drivers, dispatch highway patrol and put emergency personnel on alert.
Synapse is going to host a webinar about the importance of wrong-way detection for road safety in mid-October.
Stand 605
