Delhi Traffic Police plans to expand automated camera installations after it charges 22k challans in 15 days

March 15, 2019;

The traffic police have issued more than 22,000 challans for red light and stop line violations within a fortnight of automated cameras being installed at traffic signals on Ring Road in south Delhi.

The automated system collects information about the car owner from the vehicle numberplate and issues a notice to the violator through an SMS.

The violators are asked to visit the traffic police headquarters at Todapur to pay the challans. Police have approached the transport department to update the vehicle database with phone numbers of the car owners for future prosecutions.

The cameras fitted on traffic signals at Moti Bagh, Bhikaji Cama Place, Nauroji Nagar, Andrews Ganj, Moolchand and Sarai Kale Khan record movement of vehicles on all four arms of the crossing even if they are being driven at a high speed.

Since Ring Road is one of the most used stretches in the city, the number of violations were initially high. However, after a few days the number of challans reduced after drivers became aware of the cameras.

According to a traffic police estimate, 7-8 lakh vehicles, including those coming from Noida & Gurgaon, use the south Delhi Ring Road stretch daily. Last year, about 30% of the total number of challans for violation of traffic norms were issued on this stretch.

The cameras are equipped with non-intrusive sensors capable of capturing the movement of multiple vehicles simultaneously and creating an hourly log. They are monitored from a control room at the traffic police headquarters. Once a video of a violation gets captured, a software develops an image of the numberplate.

A challan is then sent through SMS. The Vahaan database is used to access the phone numbers of the vehicle owners. The project was started in collaboration with Maruti. Currently, the traffic police have a database of 29 lakh car owners out of the 1.08 crore vehicles registered in Delhi.

“We plan to expand such camera-based prosecutions to the rest of the city under our modernisation programme,” said special commissioner (traffic) Taj Hassan. This is a pilot project before the intelligent traffic management system (ITMS) is implemented in the capital.

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