Using road markers as fiducials for automatic speed estimation in road videos

This paper presents a method for using the uniformly spaced dashed lines which are painted on U.S. roads, to estimate the speed of a vehicle. These dashed lines are technically called line lane markers, and their uniform size allows speed estimation using an inexpensive dash-cam mounted on the front of the car with a clear view of the road ahead. A novel road line detection technique is used. The method does not require infra-red cameras, LiDAR, sonar, GPS, accelerometers, vehicular odometry, or training a convolutional neural network. The current implementation provides speed estimates from any 30 frames per second (fps) dash-cam video, even those downloaded off the Internet from unknown cameras. Potential applications include lane departure warning, lane intrusion detection, and forensic speed analysis.