Road side vehicle occupancy detection system

A system for detecting vehicle occupancy, the system comprising:

• a first roadside imaging device having a first field of view;
• a first roadside light emitter emitting light in the first field of view;
• a processor, in communication with a memory, configured to:
• command the first roadside light emitter to emit light according to a first pattern for a first duration;
• command the first roadside imaging device to capture one or more images according to a second pattern associated with the first pattern, during a second duration associated with the first duration;
• receive the captured images from the first roadside imaging device;
• detect a vehicle in the captured images;
• compute a vehicle occupancy by, in each of the captured images:
• determining one or more regions of interest in each of the captured images;
• determining the vehicle occupancy based on the one or more regions of interest;
• and
• determining a most likely number of occupants based on each determined vehicle occupancy;
• and
• transmit the vehicle occupancy to a monitoring system or store the vehicle occupancy in memory.