Sit down, get ready, and prepare to enjoy an exciting treat!
First, have a look at this. It is an object you will see in many French cities. What is it, you may ask yourself? What could it be?
Well, it is something of a sentry or sentinelle as the French may say, standing stoically in rain or shine, and carefully guarding which cars and vehicles have access to the downtown area.
For, when you step back a bit and see this French intersection, you’ll see a post in the middle of the street, preventing traffic from entering the downtown area:
But, for the vehicles that are on the access list, the sentinelle causes the post in the street to lower, so that you can drive into the downtown area.
Personally I think technology like this is quite behind-the-times. You need to travel to a truly modern country like China to see how they use vehicle recognition technology in all sorts of applications.