Transport Quebec is looking for a better way to keep an eye on the roads and has asked the technology industry to develop a Wi-Fi enabled camera system that would be able to sense road conditions and visibility in real time.
The technology isn't there yet, and the call for tenders, with as much as $300,000 in backing, is to determine if such a system could be developed.
The Journal de Montreal says the government agency wants the cameras to be mounted on department trucks and be able to detect whether a road surface is dry, wet, icy or snow covered, while at the same time determining whether the visibility is good, fair or poor and also be able to transmit the data in real time to the government's Quebec 511 website.
Currently the information is collected by the humans driving those trucks and the government wants to see if there is a more efficient and accurate way of making the information more relevant.