A total of 2,325 traffic rule violators caught on camera on January 1 will be sent challans via phone or post by the city traffic police.
The new system of identifying traffic rule violators using cameras at 13 major posts of the city commenced on January 1 at midnight, and within minutes, the first offender was caught on the camera.
Under the new system, any vehicle which crosses the yellow stop line after the traffic signal goes red or drives on the wrong side will be identified on the cameras installed at various posts.
Once the details of these violators are validated, a challan would be generated on the name of the violators. The challans would be sent to the violators on phone if their phone number is registered along with the number of their vehicle, or else, would be sent to the address of the offender by post.
The first traffic rule violator of the city was captured on camera at 12:06 am, a few minutes after midnight, at Siramtoli Chowk. A challan was generated on the name, Satish Kumar, a resident of Pundag area of Ranchi who owned the bike with registration number JH01AC1569. The bike was booked for crossing the stop line after the signal went red.
License plate recognition of a total of 3,69,292 vehicles was done between Jan 1 midnight to 11:59 pm. Among these 48,355 were found violating traffic norms.
Traffic SP Ajit Peter Dungdung said, “Validation of 2,325 rule violators has already been done and a challan will be sent to them. They have to pay the fine of Rs. 100 with 15 days of receiving the challan. The validation of remaining vehicles is under process.”
Of the 2,325 violators, 1020 were crossing the stop line while 1305 were fined for driving on wrong side.
Despite regular awareness by the traffic police, not many seemed to be aware of the fact that they have to stop before the zebra crossing. “I did stop behind the yellow line when the signal went red but had to face honking and abuses by other drivers who wanted to cross the zebra crossing and stop near the traffic post. A few people cannot bring a change, everybody needs to be aware about the system, only then will it be a success,” said Manish Gupta, a banker.
Many people had a query regarding what are the types of violations the camera can detect. Answering this question, traffic SP said, “While the camera automatically detects jumping stop line and wrong side driving, it does capture all the events happening and other type of rule violation like triple riding and riding without helmet can be identified manually.”
He added, “At present we are just focusing on jumping signals and wrong side driving but soon we will start identifying other offences as well.”
The traffic police is adamant to ensure that the citizens abide by traffic rules, and if sending challans to their home does not help bring down the number of offences, the department would be taking severe steps.
“The Supreme Court’s committee on road safety has put jumping signals among four such offences in which a person can be imprisoned for three months, if caught. If people do not stop with fines, we might as well start prosecuting them” Dungudung said.
He added, “Sending the violators do jail would not be difficult as we will already have them recorded while violating rules on camera. Hopefully we will not have to take such measures and people will start following rules.”:
