It's 9 p.m. on a rural mountain highway when a 750-pound elk steps onto the road, its silhouette hidden from an oncoming driver by a curve in the terrain.
Suddenly, a roadside sign illuminates: "Wildlife Detected Ahead. Slow Down." The driver eases off the accelerator, and both travelers continue on safely.
This scenario became a reality along a 14-mile stretch of Route 460 in Southwest Virginia that recently served as a one-year pilot project testing a real-time wildlife detection and automated driver warning system. Led by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), the system used digital road signs to alert motorists to the presence of elk and other large animals. Initial results showed drivers responded to the warnings by reducing their speeds by an average of 3 mph when approaching activated signs.
“We have demonstrated an automated system that can detect wildlife, activate real-time warnings, and produce a measurable change in driver behavior both at the warning sign and across the broader detection corridor,” said Shreyas Bhat, a research associate at VTTI.
Sponsored by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), the system utilizes a network of thermal cameras and AI software to detect medium- to large-sized animals in the roadway and trigger a live warning on roadside signs for approaching drivers. The VTTI team partnered with Crosstek, a provider of off-the-shelf cameras and AI software for wildlife detection, to develop the system and leveraged T-Mobile's 5G cellular network and satellite service for remote monitoring.
Throughout deployment, the team collected data on more than 10,000 passing vehicles. The detection system itself demonstrated an overall accuracy of 97 percent for identifying medium- and large-sized wildlife.
The project’s innovative approach to remote data management recently won first place in the 2026 T-Mobile Innovate Awards Innovation in Community category.
The pilot was part of VDOT’s expansion of Corridor Q, which extends Route 460 from the Kentucky state line to the town of Grundy, Virginia. Associated with the Appalachian Development Highway System, Corridor Q traverses portions of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, providing an additional interstate connection to those in rural Appalachia. The corridor is also home to approximately 100 elk.
Collisions involving elk are costly, averaging more than $80,000 per crash, according to the project’s feasibility study. With an adult male elk weighing between 550 and 1,300 pounds, the risk to drivers is high. At the same time, elk tourism in Buchanan County has become a popular economic driver for the area.
“The motivation was to reduce the risk of accidents or fatalities while also protecting the elk in their habitat,” said Jean Paul Talledo Vilela, a VTTI research scientist.
The challenge
While similar systems have been deployed on other roadways in the U.S., building a solution that could operate reliably in remote, mountainous terrain brought its own challenges.
Talledo Vilela, the lead engineer on the project, said system architecture had to be tailored toward the unique demands of operating in the Appalachian Mountains.
“This system is unique because of the requirements of the area — it needed to be solar powered, portable, and be able to withstand all weather conditions,” Talledo Vilela said.
The wildlife detection and warning system consisted of eight portable, solar-powered trailers and dynamic message signs deployed on a 750-meter section of the Route 460 corridor.
VTTI collaborated with Crosstek to integrate the trailer network with thermal cameras that continuously monitored the roadway and surrounding shoulder areas for elk and other large wildlife. When these animals were detected, the roadside warning signs activated.
“The topography made communication signals challenging,” Talledo Vilela said. “We needed to ensure that all the trailers had the ability to communicate with each other and send the data from each of those back to the main hub.”
As part of the effort to measure driver behavior, roadside radar units were deployed along the corridor to analyze vehicle speed.
“Speed is an important data point to understand if drivers were actually paying attention to the message board,” Talledo Vilela said. “Even if they are not braking aggressively, some reduction in speed indicates that they may be paying more attention to their surroundings because they got that alert.”
Looking ahead
The initial pilot ended in September 2026. Although data analysis is continuing, Talledo Vilela believes the project demonstrates how portable wildlife detection systems could be deployed in other areas where animals frequently cross roadways.
“One of the goals was to understand how a portable solution can be transferred or adopted in other locations,” Talledo Vilela said.
Beyond wildlife detection, the research team sees opportunities to adapt the technology for other roadway safety applications that require real-time hazard detection and driver warnings.