E-Paper
Bengaluru traffic police to install cameras to check speeding
An officer said that deploying traffic police in the middle of the night is not a viable option since large manpower is required to cover all major streets in Bengaluru.
As the city continues to witness instances of speeding resulting in accidents, the Bengaluru traffic police are now planning to install speed monitoring cameras capable of recording registration plates of the vehicles. In the initial phase, the traffic police have identified 14 flyovers in the city, where the cameras will be installed.
“We have been seeing instances of drag racing and another speeding on empty roads at night very often. Since most of such instances are reported post-midnight, we don’t have any traffic police present on the road. To tackle this, we will be installing these cameras, and based on these inputs from their feeds we will act,” said senior officials of the Bengaluru traffic management center.
The officer added that deploying traffic police in the middle of the night is not a viable option since large manpower is required to cover all major streets in Bengaluru. “Unlike a drink and drive test, we can’t set up checkpoints because they would race in a different location. So, the cameras will be an effective way to stop this menace,” said the officer.
According to official records, the Bengaluru traffic police have a sanctioned strength of 5,262 personnel to regulate traffic across 44,000 intersections and they are 600 men short of the sanctioned strength. The officer added that the use of technology will help the department cope with this shortage as well.
It will also work as a pilot project for Bengaluru police’s plans to introduce an artificial intelligence-based CCTV network in the city. In the last Karnataka budget, ₹699 crore has been set aside to install 7,500 surveillance cameras which will enable the state capital’s police to introduce facial recognition technology and machine-learning-based video monitoring. The implementation of these cameras by traffic police is expected to be the first step towards the project.
A senior police officer said on condition of anonymity that the 7,500 cameras will include fixed day-and-night surveillance cameras, body-worn cameras, and drones equipped with high-resolution image capturing devices. The police will also procure facial recognition cameras and registration plate recognition devices. All cameras will be connected to a 40-seat Command and Control Centre, with two centers that will be mobile.
The 7,500 cameras are only the front-end of the entire project. According to another senior officer, close to 30% of the funds will be used to create a back end. The officer said that to optimize the CCTV network, the police will introduce technologies such as facial recognition.
“We want to have surveillance capability where a vehicle spotted at one traffic signal can be identified and tagged so that other cameras can trace the vehicle and predict its possible path. Similarly, we want to track ‘persons of interest’ using facial recognition and other AI-based technologies,” said an officer who is in charge of the project implementation.
On September 25, a luxury car that was speeding rammed into a private taxi on HAL Airport Road in east Bengaluru before hitting a compound wall late night. The impact of the crash was such that the taxi with two passengers inside it overturned, however, no injuries were reported. The driver of the Porsche, identified as Zuhair Mevani, 32, a resident of Fraser Town, allegedly lost control of the wheel.
This was the third incident in last month, where speeding cars on joyrides have crashed in Bengaluru. On September 1, DMK MLA Y Prakash’s son Karunaa Sagar and six of his friends died after the SUV they were in jumped onto the pavement and rammed into the compound wall of a building. On September 15, two friends were killed on Electronics City flyover when they were mowed down by a speeding car.
