Human detection for high occupany vehicle lanes

One way that local authorities and transport managers try to encourage car sharing is through car-pooling or high occupany lanes - lanes on roads that you are not allowed to use unless there is a minimum number of people in the vehicle. Sneaky drivers have resorted to lots of different ruses to pretend that there are more people in the car.

Here is a link to a presentation by a professor at Loughborough University about how IT (through sophisticated imaging and processing) can help to distinguish the real people from the inflatable dummies. The presentation document hints at, but does not discuss, some slightly scarier applications of the technology, including "border control" and "crowd monitoring"; the same techniques that make tighter control of drivers possible also enable tighter controls over other activities.