Notes on auditing roads with a camera
What we have learned building an automated road condition survey — the mechanics, the numbers, the trade-offs, and the parts that do not work as well as a brochure would suggest.
Start here · The guideRoad Safety Audits in India: A Practical GuideWhat a road safety audit is, who orders one, how the work is done, and where automation fits — with every post below slotted into the chapter it belongs to.- Explainer
How AI detects road defects from ordinary dashcam video
How a windscreen camera becomes a defect list: how frames turn into detections, how each one gets a location, and why an ordinary dashcam is enough.
- Case study
Inside a 12.4 km audit: reading 128 defects on NH-44
A walkthrough of our public sample audit: what 128 detections across 12.4 km look like once sorted, and the two-kilometre cluster that changes the plan.
- Comparison
Manual road surveys vs AI video audits: an honest comparison
Where a walked inspection still wins, where camera-based auditing wins outright, and how to decide which parts of your survey programme should change.
- Data
What “85% pothole detection” actually means for your audit
How to read a detection accuracy figure: why 85% and 97% measure different things, why the missing 15% matters less than you think, and what it hides.