Infrastructure Technology Podcast: IntelliRoad’s AI-powered detection system

This week on the Infrastructure Technology Podcast, the team kicks off with Roads and Bridges trivia before diving into Gavin’s interview with Sean Poole. Poole breaks down the alarming scale of wrong-way driving crashes—over 3,800 incidents in Florida in 2022—and how IntelliRoad’s AI- and LIDAR-powered IntelliConnect platform is working to prevent them through real-time detection and alerts. The episode wraps with Ileana’s explainer on bump outs, showing how curb extensions and bus bulbs make streets safer and transit more efficient.

Here is a transcript of the episode:

GJ: And welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. I'm Gavin Jenkins, senior managing editor of Roads and Bridges, and with me is Ileana Garand, digital editor of Roads and Bridges, and he is our heart and soul, the man, the myth, the legend, Brandon Lewis, associate editor of Mass Transit.

BL: Well, thank you, Gavin, and as always, it's a Tuesday, and as I said last week, we are back weekly, so it is a Tuesday, and it is podcast day.

GJ: Welcome to the show. Thank you for tuning in, and we are going weekly every Tuesday this season. And also be sure to email us at [email protected] and follow us. You can subscribe on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. And today we have my interview with Sean Poole from IntelliRoad, but before we dive into that, we have some more discussion, little bit of trivia, and we're going to dive right into the trivia. To tell you, the listener, what we're doing, every Tuesday on Roads and Bridges website, we have trivia, and let's get a little taste of what we've been giving people on the website. Ileana, take it away.

IG: So not only is it Podcast Tuesday, but it is Trivia Tuesday. This is Roads and Bridges trivia as Gavin mentioned. If you love it, you too can actually participate every Tuesday. Check out our socials, check out our website. We post a trivia question. You put your answer in, you have a week to do it and the next week we post another question, and we have the answer and a little explainer, so I'm going to go back to some of our first trivia questions and ask these guys to test their knowledge. This is kind of my revenge. Listeners, from last episode, Brandon really scraped the floor with me on the Two Truths and a Lie, so I'm going to try to trip him up, but I think the man, the myth, the legend is going to end up also acing this one.

GJ: You can't trick him.

IG: Can't trick him.

GJ: He's too smart.

IG: Our first question, what is the main purpose of an expansion joint in bridge construction? And your options are: A) to accommodate thermal movement, B) to reduce noise levels or C) to allow easier traffic flow. What do y'all think?

GJ: Now, I signed off on this question like six weeks ago, and I've completely forgotten. This has been on our website as of six weeks ago, and I have so much work on my plate that I have no recollection of the answer, so Brandon, I'll let you take first dibs.

BL: My knowledge about the Roads and Bridges industry, I've learned a lot since starting this podcast and working with you guys, but it is not obviously at the par with you guys, so most of these might be a shot in the dark. Originally, I was thinking it had something to do with the way the bridge, the infrastructure on the bridge lowers sort of like a drawbridge a little bit, and so my guess is the thing most compatible to that would be C, and that's the answer I'm going to go with.

IG: To allow easier traffic flow.

BL: Yes.

GJ: I know that it's not B. I think it's A or C, and I'm going to go with A.

IG: And Gavin is correct.

GJ: Okay.

IG: It is to accommodate thermal movement.

GJ: Now, I did not actually know that. I think that it just clicked, and I remembered the actual answer.

IG: A little bit on that. So expansion joints, they're critical components in bridge constructions. They absorb the thermal movement of materials caused by seasonal temperature changes. That was a warmup round. That was to accommodate thermal movement. For our second question, I am going to ask you which bridge has the longest main span in the U.S.? Is it A) the Mackinac Bridge? Is it B) the Golden Gate Bridge? Or is it C) the, oh my gosh, I'm going to butcher this, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge?

GJ: Alright, and obviously I know where the Golden Gate bridge is. That's in San Fran. Where are the other two bridges?

IG: The Mackinac Bridge is actually in Michigan and then the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, that is in Staten Island, New York.

BL: Oh, okay. 

GJ: That's what I was going to guess like New Jersey. Cool name though.

BL: I mean going into this, the only one I've heard of is the Golden Gate Bridge, but I feel like that would be more well known if that was the right answer, so I'm between A and C. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Again, my bridge knowledge is showing here. Oh, boy. Now I'm trying to second guess myself. Is it the Golden Gate? You know what, I think it's the Golden Gate. I'm going to say B. I'm going to change my mind. I'm going to go B.

GJ: Alright. I know it's not the Golden Gate. I know it's not that. Alright, so I know it's not that because we did this on the website, and I thought, I had the same conclusion you did as well, Brandon. I don't think it's the Mackinac, I'm pretty sure, it is the Verrazzano-Narrows one because I remember the answer being New York, so that's my answer, C.

IG: And that is correct. Next time, I'll have some new trivia questions, so it's a little more fair.

GJ: It's not fair. I know these.

IG: Yep. When this bridge opened in 1964, the span was the longest in the world and that was over 4,000 feet.

GJ: That is a long bridge.

IG: It's a big old bridge.

GJ: It is a long bridge. Brandon, I got to ask you, do you have a favorite bridge?

BL: The one in Pittsburgh. I don't even know the name of it, but

GJ: We have many. We have many, sir. We're the city of bridges.

BL: I guess the one that looks right over PNC Park. I always see that one like downtown, it's like golden yellow.

GJ: Well, there's three there that are Golden yellow, the three sisters bridges.

BL: Well, pretty much any of those Three. 

GJ: But the one that looks over the bridge, that is the Fort Duquesne Bridge, and that was used in the movie Jack Reacher, where the assassin stopped on the bridge, which is impossible. And then shot people on the shores right by PNC Park in the movie, the Tom Cruise movie, based on the book, the Jack Reacher book, which is just impossible. You can't stop on that bridge ever and especially in the middle of the day and then shoot people, but that would be the 4K. I'm surprised to hear you say that that bridge is your favorite. It is a traffic nightmare.

BL: I just think on television it looks aesthetically beautiful.

GJ: Well, they're all beautiful. Everything's beautiful in Pittsburgh. You being in Cleveland should know that, but okay, that was fun trivia. Let's dive into my interview now with Sean Poole, and a note to the listener, once again in this interview, I will express my fears of artificial intelligence and how it will destroy all of our lives. It's an ongoing thing on this show because it's an ongoing anxiety in my life, so let's dive in.

GJ: Sean, welcome to Infrastructure Technology Podcast. How are you today, sir?

SP: Doing well, Gavin. Thanks for having me. How are you doing?

GJ: I'm doing alright. Well, today we're going to be talking about the wrong way driving detection system, and it's a system that's designed to help prevent catastrophic accidents. And so why don't we start with what is the identified need for the wrong way detection system? Are there really that many wrong accidents, crashes? I don't want to call 'em accidents. They're crashes. Are there that many crashes that happen based on people going down the wrong way?

SP: Well, it's a very scary situation. This is a mission critical, life saving type of detection system. When we first started this, I thought the exact same thing. Well, how many are we really going to find? Maybe one, two, three a month, something like that. It can't be that big of a deal, and actually in 2022 here in the state of Florida where I am, we had 3,800, over 3,800 wrong way driving incidents, and so these are 3,800 crashes, as you mentioned, that resulted in 128 fatalities in 2022, so the number is mind blowing, and this is a problem across the country, not just here in the state of Florida.

GJ: Yeah, absolutely. I almost came close to making a Florida joke like, ‘Well, Florida’, but no, no, that's way too big of a number for me to make a Florida joke. That is crazy. So tell me then about how it came about with the development of the detection.

SP: So as we all know, during the COVID time period, there was a reduction in traffic flow, but what was done when everybody was at home was doing a lot of analysis on the roadway and really diving into the data and then we saw post COVID, immediately there was a spike in crashes and incidents and so our team has been looking into this for many years. We've been doing work with transportation agencies for 20 years now and working exclusively with government agencies for over 23 years, so we know the business of government. We know how to look into the data on the roadways working with transportation organizations and what we want to do is dive in and see these are the communities that we live in, and these affect our family members, our friends. And so when we really get down into it, it was what is the most mission critical? What are the burning problems that these agencies are trying to solve and how can we help them do that? And it is really amazing when you start to get into the details, especially wrong way driving because not only was there a staggering amount of crashes and a high rate of fatalities that come with it, but wrong way crashes often end in head-on collisions and when they end up in a head-on collision, 81% of the time it ends up in a fatality, and this is just unacceptable and so what we want to do is really dive into it and see how can we help? We're here to help and so what can we do to do our part in society to make it better? And that's really what we're diving into and looking at.

GJ: Okay. Now I mentioned your company's name in my introduction with my cohosts, but just so we're clear, I mispronounce words all the time. It's Chira solutions or RA Kira.

SP: Solutions.

GJ: I see. My natural instinct is always the mispronunciation. I think that's because I'm from Pittsburgh, and we butcher the English language, Kyra Solutions, and it's the IntelliRoad Divisions wrong way driving detection system.

SP: Right. So within Kyra Solutions, we have a dedicated transportation practice, and that's our IntelliRoad practice.

GJ: Okay. Tell me about the platform that this is on. Is it IntelliConnect?

SP: Yes. So IntelliConnect is our end-to-end modular smart advanced traffic management system, so what does all of that really mean.

GJ: Yeah, what does it mean and how does it work?

SP: Exactly. So what this platform is able to do is to really empower traffic management operators and be able to detect incidents in real time and send notifications to motorists, and so as you move through this entire process that traffic management professionals have to do, each step is vital. Every second can result in a life saved and so what our platform is able to do is to bring all of their existing systems onto one platform. Now, I don't know if you've ever been in a traffic management center, maybe some of the listeners have or have not, but when you walk in, you'll see this giant video board typically, and there's all these different screens and then you look down, and there's all these operators that are there that are monitoring. They've got screens vertically, horizontally. They've got anywhere from four to eight screens in front of them, and each screen has multiple systems that they're navigating through and having to utilize to make sure that the traffic is flowing properly, and as they're looking to detect incidences, a lot of the times these cameras on the roadways, they have to what's called a pitch tilt or to try to find incidences, and so these can be very arduous tasks of all the data and all the roadway miles that are out there and so what our system is able to do is to consolidate all of these different systems onto one platform. We’re able to leverage things like AI and machine learning to be able to detect these incidents on the roadway, automatically generate alerts to these traffic management professionals and then all they have to do is click on that alert, and it brings up all of the images, all of the data surrounding what just happened, so that they can make a quick informed decision on what they need to do to respond to that incident, including sending messages directly to motorist in both connected and non-connected vehicles, which is very important. We want to make sure that everyone gets these safety notifications, not just people with the latest and greatest cars.

GJ: Well, how would that work then if their car is not connected?

SP: So what we're able to do is we have strategic partnerships with telecom companies, with mapping companies, and so we're able to push notifications directly out to motorists in a hands-free audio first playing through their CarPlay or over their phone audio first as I've mentioned, give them an alert. And really where this stemmed from and where we got this idea was AAA has done a study that looked at these big overhead signs. Everyone knows 'em as you're driving down the interstate every so often you've got these big, they're called variable message signs, dynamic message boards, but what we are able to do is put one of those signs essentially in an audio version in every vehicle, and so the AAA study said that when a driver or a motorist sees one of those signs within one mile of the incident, 95% of the time they take a safe action, whether that's moving over or slowing down or whatever that may be, but it really shows that motorists are wanting to be informed, they're able to make these decisions when they have the information, and so we want to get that information out to all motorists.

GJ: Alright, so let's say I'm driving down the road, and I turn onto the wrong way on the one way street, so now I have a smartphone, and I have a car that it's paired with, so I turn on the wrong way down a one-way street. I'm just in a regular residential neighborhood here in Pittsburgh, the screen that's playing my podcast on my dashboard, that would immediately get an alert, say you just turned down the wrong way street?

SP: That is what this platform has the capability of doing, and that's what we're doing with our strategic partners, and it's very important in the scenario that you mentioned, we want to make sure that look, everybody has a hundred apps on their phone that do all sorts of different things, but it was really important for us to secure these strategic partnerships so that you don't have to download another app in order to access this. It should be available on apps that you use every day because what we want to do, our mission is ultimately to reduce serious crashes and crashes in general, but ultimately save lives. And so with that mission in mind, we want to make sure that we're informing all motorists in what we see in across all industries. There's a thrive for information from consumers out there. We're consuming a lot of data every single day, and so that is how people are making their decisions, and we need to get that information to them where they're ingesting it.

GJ: This question is going to sound weird. Let's say that a one armed man murdered my wife, and I am on the run from the U.S. Marshals, and I'm innocent, and I'm in a car, and I drive down the wrong way street. Will Tommy Lee Jones be able to track me and then prevent me from proving my innocence?

SP: It is not a odd question at all. The thought of being tracked or what is happening with your personal information is something that we take very seriously. There's a lot of perception out there. Big Brother is always watching and one thing that we pride ourselves in is that we do not collect any personal identifiable information that is not collected. It is not stored, it is purely things like location and then it is picked up based off of your heading your speed and your location. It triggers an alert, it's sent there and then it goes away. We're not collecting personal information in this.

GJ: Alright. Did you like the way I posed the question a little Fugitive action. So the Florida Department of Transportation, after years of evaluation, they have added it to their approved products list. Where else is the system currently being used?

SP: So the approved products list in the state of Florida is a very long process to be able to get a system like this approved, very rigorous testing documentation. I was extremely proud of the work that our team did in our partnership with the Florida Department of Transportation to be able to get that achieved, so one, a big thanks to our team and the department for their rigorous review, but not only are we here in the state of Florida, so we have started here. This is where we are based, and so we were working in our backyard. We're in several agencies here in Florida, but we are also in discussions with over a dozen agencies in other states across the country currently right now for this type of wrong way driving detection system. It is unique. We were the first ones in the United States to come out with a LIDAR based detection system, which has been revolutionizing the game. It is really a game changer because it cuts out all of the noise. You're able to get greater accuracy. We have 100% detection, but we were able to reduce the false positives by more than 50% and what that means for traffic management professionals is that with a traditional camera, maybe a guy on a lawnmower is cutting the lawn on the side of the road, and it picks him up as a wrong way driver. Maybe a bird flies in front of a camera, and it picks it up as a wrong way driver. Well, we're able to leverage new technology like LIDAR to cut through all of that and make the operations more efficient, which increases those response times for emergency personnel as well.

GJ: Okay. Alright, well I'm going to get you out of here on this question. How do you plan on expanding the technology in the future? Will the AI driven analytics play a larger role in its function, and as a follow-up big picture, is this the kind of thing that should be included in an app that has maps like Waves or Google? I feel like that's me personally. That's what’s usually up on my dashboard, so I don't get lost if I'm on a road trip or something like that. Should this kind of technology have that function as well?

SP: Well we are working with those mapping companies that you just mentioned and several others as well to make sure we cover the entire spectrum. The great thing about our system and the IntelliConnect platform, which this wrong way driving system is on, is it is able to have plug and play microservice architecture that's got built-in APIs and device drivers so all that lingo and jargon means that we get to evolve as technology evolves, and so we have our own perception software where we are leveraging AI not only on the analytics side, but also on the detection side and alerting side as well, and so what we're able to do is today we use LIDAR. Ten years ago, there was no LIDAR and so as we start to look at emerging technologies, we can grow with technology, but the important thing about having a plug and play type of system like we do is it empowers agencies to leverage their existing infrastructure. So let's say they have multiple different types of wrong way driving detection systems, they're able to not only utilize ours, but utilize others as well to ensure that they're using the best in class for this type of detection because it is mission critical lifesaving detection work that they're doing and being able to connect all of their roadways with the different types of systems that are needed and defined based on the roadways and their ops that they need to do it is important to have that flexibility, so what we're able to do as I mentioned, is leverage existing infrastructure and existing technology but prepare them for the future, so that they can phase things in and out based on the rapid movement of technology.

GJ: That is awesome. Well it sounds like that this technology is going to be really helpful in the future. It sounds like it's expanding, and it sounds like a lot of lives are going to be saved in Florida and then eventually throughout the country, and that's awesome. Sean Poole, thank you so much for joining us here on Infrastructure Technology Podcast. It's been a joy to talk to you.

SP: Thank you so much, Gavin. Really appreciate it. 

GJ: And we're back. That was my interview with Sean Poole with IntelliRoad, and Brandon, what did you think?

BL: Well, as I always tell you Gavin, great interview, but this stat that Sean Poole said absolutely shocked me, and this was when he was talking about wrong way head on collisions, and he said 81% of the time a wrong way head on collision happens, it results in death. Think about that guys, that's an eight in 10 chance of a wrong way collision that if you get hit, it’s probably going to result in death.

GJ: It is a scary stat, and if you think about it, if you're going 20 miles an hour and you just hit a guardrail by accident, it really jolts your car. It really messes you up. If you do a fender bender at 25, 30 miles per hour, you could get whiplash, you could really get hurt. You don't think you're going that fast, but the collision is just really dangerous and causes a lot of damage, and so when you do a head on at that speed and usually head on collisions when you're going down a wrong way can often be much faster than 25 or 30 miles per hour. So yeah, it's just scary stuff and IntelliRoad as a company, it's working in Florida, and I think that it's a technology that can save some lives. Ileana, what did you think?

IG: I think my biggest takeaway is I need to watch The Fugitive.

GJ: I think so, too. I mean Dr. Richard Kimball. It's a great movie. Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones. Excellent.

BL: I have never seen it either.

GJ: Oh my God, both of you! Dear listener, I am a 44-year-old man dealing with Gen Zers in their twenties who don't know good movies. Okay, moving on. Next we're going to have a little bit of fun with another segment from Ileana. Ileana, take it away.

IG: So I hit you with the trivia in the beginning of this episode, and I'm going to sing you out sweetly with a Roads and Bridges Explained. Today, we're going to talk about a traffic safety device. I think drivers may not actually like this as much, but this is really, really important for pedestrians and cyclists. Anyone who has walked on a street is going to say, ‘Thank you for the bump out’. Now, what is a bump out? They’re these narrow streets for your safety. So whenever you notice the curb coming more out into the road, the road is going to narrow, and the curb is going to come out into the street. That is called a bump out. It serves a serious purpose. You may not notice it because who's looking down at the curb and thinking, ‘Oh, the curb has gotten bigger’, but it increases safety, and it reduces environmental damage.

I named a couple of different bump outs today. For my fellow co-host, Brandon Lewis, I'm going to focus on, I think this is my favorite, I'm going to focus on the bus bump out. They're called bus bulbs, and a bus bulb extends the bus stop into a street's parking lane, so it lets buses stop immediately in the street they're in. They don't have to merge left or right into a separate bus lane. They can just stop and that bus stop is right there. Then they open the bus door, people can climb in and so it lets them.

BL: That's cool.

IG: Yeah, it lets passengers board without the bus leaving the travel lane. It makes public transit faster and then more reliable because the bus doesn't have to merge in and out of traffic. This is a great use of bus lanes where it's the bus only lane and then you have that bump out there to let passengers on.

GJ: So you're walking down the street and the sidewalk's normal where you have enough room for two or three people and then all of a sudden the sidewalk doubles or triples in size? Like if you're looking down from the sky, it's kind of like a hump, like a little hill and sometimes it is circular, sometimes it's like a big rectangle that's been dropped onto the road and attached to the sidewalk, and that's what this is called is a bump out?

IG: Yeah, so there are, like I said, a couple different versions. There are some that are located in the middle of the block. There's some that just makes the street a little. It's parallel to the street as well. Makes it a little bit narrower. There's a funky one where it makes the road twist a little bit, twist and turn to make drivers slow down besides the bus one. A big part of these bumpouts is they're trying to get drivers to slow down. They're trying to give pedestrians more room to walk to cross the street, make them more visible.

GJ: Here in Pittsburgh, what we have is a bump out pothole combo to slow people down where to get through the street you have to maneuver a bunch of potholes and swerve around the bumpouts, so it's really safe here.

IG: It sounds like a Mario Kart track.

GJ: After a hard winter, it sometimes can be, so Brandon, did you know about bumpouts? Did you know what they were called?

BL: No, I did not know what they were called as Ileana was describing them, I can somewhat picture some of them in my neighborhood, though. My neighborhood's infrastructure needs to be completely reworked. It's not the here nor there for the ITP, but yeah, no, that is fascinating, and I'm all about obviously making public transit safer.

GJ: Okay, thank you Ileana for that explainer. That does it for today's show. Want to thank Sean Poole for joining us from IntelliRoad. I want to thank Brandon Lewis for bringing it. He always brings it every week. 

BL: I try guys. I try.

GJ: We'll be back next week with his interview with Maikel from Metrolink?

BL: Yep, that’s it.

GJ: Yep, that's the name. I didn't want to butcher it. Okay, that's it for today's show. Thank you to Endeavor Business Media, our parent company. Thanks to Ileana for crushing it with two segments with trivia and the explainer and thank you to the listener. Be sure to email us at [email protected], and we'll be back next week with another episode. Goodbye.