Madurai City Traffic police on Wednesday began testing auditory traffic signal at Goripalayam junction. The new signalling system comes with public address system that provides audio guide for visually challenged pedestrians to cross roads.
“We have planned to install auditory signal system at 21 junctions in the city,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) K. Sugumaran, who inspected the working of the new system that was being tested on both lanes of Alagarkoil Road at the junction.
As vehicular movement is stopped with a red light, and the green light allowing pedestrians to cross the road using the zebra crossing glows, an automated voice in Tamil tells the pedestrians to cross the road.
The voice keeps repeating the message ‘Pedestrians can cross the road’ till the signal is changed. As the red light for the pedestrians glows, the automated voice starts pedestrians to stop. This message asking the pedestrians to stop using the zebra crossing is repeated five times before the green signal for the vehicles to cross the ‘stop line’ glows.
“This repeated message asking them to stop will ensure that the pedestrians, especially the visually challenged, do not miss the message and also get sufficient time to either cross the road or return to the roadside safely before the vehicles start moving,” he said.
The auditory signal system is being installed with funds allotted by the Department of Social Welfare.
The traffic police were instructing vehicle users to stop at the ‘stop line’ so that they did not hit any visually challenged person who started walking on the zebra crossing following the audio message. The testing will be done to familiarise vehicle users to the new system before it is implemented at other road junctions.
The speakers have been tuned to a level at which the message is clearly heard by the visually challenged persons waiting on the side of a particular road at the junction. At the same time, the audio does not overlap to others standing on the sides of other roads at the junction.
