Israel Tests New Express Lane Tech to Automatically Count Passengers in Cars

Israel’s Transportation Ministry announced (Sunday) that beginning this week, a new technology pilot will begin operating at the Shapirim express lane complex to test a smart system for verifying and counting passengers in a vehicle.

The pilot is being conducted through Cross Israel, in cooperation with the express lane operator and the technology companies partnering on the project. The new system, based on artificial intelligence, will enable automatic and reliable verification of the number of passengers in a vehicle.

The Transportation Ministry said that "the ability to determine accurately and automatically how many passengers are in a vehicle is a necessary condition for effective enforcement and for operating lanes of this type. The success of the pilot could mark a breakthrough on a global scale and bring about a significant change in the management, operation, and enforcement of high-occupancy lanes."

The pilot is intended to test advanced technology based on artificial intelligence (AI) and video processing, which will enable identification without the need to stop at human inspection stations. The technology being tested was developed by COMPIE Technologies and is based on a dedicated app installed on the driver’s cellphone.

The app performs a smart scan of the vehicle’s passengers using the phone’s camera and advanced artificial intelligence algorithms, capable of identifying and verifying the number of passengers in the vehicle, detecting fraud attempts, and cross-checking data from the beginning and end of the trip.

At present, receiving an exemption from the toll on the express lane requires stopping for a physical count of the passengers. The new solution now being tested could in the future allow automatic verification of vehicle occupancy and uninterrupted travel without stopping, while maintaining a high level of reliability and effective enforcement capability.

The current pilot is a continuation of an initial pilot conducted in 2024, and is intended to assess the technology’s readiness for future implementation in Israel’s high-occupancy lane system. As part of the pilot, about 1,300 different scenarios will be tested, including a wide range of passenger types, vehicles, lighting conditions, and fraud scenarios, with the aim of evaluating the system’s accuracy, reliability, and resilience under real-world conditions.