By Todd Ruff, business development manager – North America, SAFEmine Technology USA, and Tarn Medinski, Teck ART engineer, Teck – Applied Research and Technology
A trial of the SAFEmine Traffic Awareness and Collision Avoidance System was conducted on surface mining equipment and light vehicles at Teck’s Line Creek Operations in British Columbia in 2012. The SAFEmine system uses GPS to determine vehicle location, speed and direction of travel and broadcasts this information to other nearby vehicles to increase the operator’s awareness of nearby traffic and potential collisions. A six-week trial was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of SAFEmine in increasing traffic safety. Online real-time tracking of vehicles along with vehicle status reports were also demonstrated. Data was analyzed regarding alarms associated with speeding, close vehicle interactions and potential collisions. The performance of customized alarming schemes for specific interactions, e.g., trucks with loaders, was also analyzed.