A test operation of electronic toll collection (ETC) was initiated at the Odawara Toll Gate on March 31, 1997 to confirm that safe and smooth traffic operation can be secured at actual toll gates. Where conventional toll collection takes 14 seconds per car in Japan on average, ETC takes only about 3 seconds per car.

TV cameras were installed at Awaza curve on the Hanshin Expressway to automatically detect disabled vehicles and those involved in accidents by processing their image. This reduced the time required to provide information to trailing vehicles from 8 minutes to 2 seconds. Consequently, the rate of secondary accidents decreased to half of what it was before the system was introduced. A system was introduced that automatically detects unforeseen occurrences in tunnels by way of image processing. When the image processing device detects these occurrences, it displays warnings on an indicating device and makes available on-the-scene pictures recorded by the cameras.