Abstract. There is a worldwide effort to apply 21st century intelli-gence to evolving our transportation networks. The goals of smart transportation networks are quite noble and manifold, including safety, efficiency, law enforcement, energy conservation, and emis-sion reduction. Computer vision is playing a key role in this transpor-tation evolution. Video imaging scientists are providing intelligent sensing and processing technologies for a wide variety of applications and services. There are many interesting technical challenges includ-ing imaging under a variety of environmental and illumination condi-tions, data overload, recognition and tracking of objects at high speed, distributed network sensing and processing, energy sources, as well as legal concerns. This paper presents a survey of computer vision techniques related to three key problems in the transportation domain: safety, efficiency, and security and law enforcement. A broad review of the literature is complemented by detailed treatment of a few selected algorithms and systems that the authors believe represent the state-of-the-art. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI. [DOI: 10.1117/1.JEI.22.4.041121]