LSU gets $773,500 to study commercial vehicle crash causes

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana university has a $773,500 federal grant to use streaming traffic camera video to study commercial motor vehicle crashes.

The lead researcher is Professor Helmut Schneider at Louisiana State University's Center for Analytics & Research in Transportation Safety.

A news release Friday said Schneider and Supratik (soo-PRAH-tik) Mukhopadhyay (moo-koh-PAH-tay) in LSU's Division of Computer Science will use advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to analyze video as it comes in from multiple cameras.

Among other things, the analysis will count commercial vehicle crashes and look at factors such as congestion, other crashes and breakdowns, speed and traffic violations, and other unsafe behavior.

The researchers hope to provide insights to help Louisiana State Police reduce the numbers of crashes, injuries and deaths.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration gave the grant.