Road maintenance vehicles ahead! Navigation app alerts
To date, 10 road maintenance vehicles from five companies in Pudong have been equipped with the new system.
Motorists who use the Alibaba-owned mapping service Amap in Shanghai will now be able to get alerts if there are road maintenance vehicles ahead.
Vehicles used for street cleaning, car-towing, rescue and road construction are often involved in rear-end collisions, despite anti-collision cushions and warning lights.
Road maintenance companies have long called for solutions to better protect their workers.
Pudong traffic police said on Saturday that together with Amap they hope the new solution will prove to be effective.
The system has been on trial at the Shanghai-Nanjing expressway within Wuxi, Jiangsu Province.
The road maintenance vehicles send their real-time positions to Amap, which alerts cars coming up behind those vehicles within 2 kilometers.
Shen Weizhi, a representative of Amap, said the trial was a success.
"The speed of cars within 1 kilometer behind the maintenance vehicles was down 37 percent, and the rate of rear-end collision accidents was down from 81 percent to 69 percent," he said.
So far, 10 road maintenance vehicles from five companies in Pudong have been equipped with the new system.
Lu Shuhui, director of the expressway squad of Pudong traffic police, said they will also step up patrols at parts of the expressways where road maintenance vehicles are sited.
