Laser Scanners Contribute to Faster Road Clearance

By making a 3D image of the crash scene, police investigators can view the scene remotely rather than manually logging information at the site itself. This investigation process currently results in motorways being closed for an average of six hours after a serious crash, but the laser scanners should reduce this by 39 minutes on average. This is based on a trial use of scanners in the Metropolitan and Humberside areas. The scanners are mounted on tripods, and take around four minutes to deliver a 360° image of the scene containing over 30 million data points, with resolution down to the millimetre.

While the investment was first proposed in summer 2011, the finalised deal means that police forces will start to receive their grants in January 2012, with each force putting the money towards 37 scanners.