Those who violate the traffic rules on Chennai’s arterial roads —Anna Salai, EVR Salai (Poonamallee High Road), and Kamarajar Salai (Beach Road) — may not be caught by the traffic police any more. But they will not go scot-free either.
They will get e-challans at their home as the Greater Chennai Traffic Police will extend their Traffic Regulation Observation Zone (TROZ) project to these thoroughfares. The speed display boards may also start generating and sending e-challans in the immediate future.
With assistance from Hyundai, the traffic police had established the TROZ at Anna Nagar roundabout in 2019. Under this initiative, modern CCTV cameras were installed to capture the images of vehicles violating traffic rules.
The traffic policemen were manually generating e-challans based on the images from the CCTV cameras and dispatching them to the vehicle owners by post.
Since the number of violations was so huge that the police could not generate as many challans, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) was roped in and the database of vehicle details was linked. The TROZ, upgraded with automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras, was relaunched in 2021.
The ANPR cameras were installed at Anna Nagar roundabout, Anna Nagar police station roundabout, Shanthi Colony junction, 100 Feet Road-Ambattur Estate Road junction, and Anna Nagar West Depot-18th Avenue junction. These cameras are capturing violations such as signal jumping, stop-line crossing, wrong turn, over-speeding, triple riding and riding without helmets.
Now the cameras generate the challans, which are sent to the violators, with their addresses collected from the Vahan portal. Instantly, an SMS is also sent to the violators’ registered mobile numbers. Over 2,000-2,600 challans are being generated from the TROZ daily.
A senior traffic police officer says, “The system has made a huge impact on road-users, especially two-wheelers and cars. They follow road discipline and traffic rules mostly. It has a deterrent effect on violators.”
J. Chidambara Perumal, a resident of Anna Nagar, says, “Since it is an automatic system, it does not care who the violator is. The violation, which may be voluntary or involuntary, is secondary here. It is getting recorded. We like the system since violators are aware that they will be caught.”
According to K.T. Ravi Kumar, a resident of Anna Nagar, “After the system of automatic challans was introduced, people realise their responsibility and maintain road discipline, to some extent, in the Anna Nagar area. No one dares to jump the signal or violate the stop line.”
Following the good impact, the traffic police plan to introduce a similar initiative on a few more stretches — Anna Salai, EVR Salai and Kamarajar Salai. “The work is on to launch it on these stretches,” says Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) R. Sudhakar.
Technological initiatives
The traffic police have been launching technological initiatives for enforcement, regulation, and road safety. Besides the TROZ, 15 ANPR cameras are being installed at 11 junctions, including Parry’s Corner, Chennai Central, Vepery, Koyambedu, and TTK Road, where wrong-side driving is rampant.
To curb over-speeding, which is one of the major causes of accidents, the speed display boards were installed on Anna Salai, Kamarajar Salai, EVR Salai, ECR (near VGP), 100 Feet Road (Sectors 10 and 13), Ashok Nagar, and OMR. The speed display boards can be programmed for the maximum speed limit allowed in day and night and will also detect the speed at which various vehicles cross the board.
“By seeing this, the road-users will get educated about the speed limit and whether they are within it. The speed display boards are not linked to the e-challan system. A separate tender for installing 100 speed radar guns with ANPR cameras attached to the e-challan system has been processed,” says a police officer.
All the junctions have the option of being run in automatic and manual modes. For changing the mode and the various phases of manual mode, the traffic officer has to stand near the controller and operate from a wired button. Because of this, he is not able to move around the signal and discipline the road-users who do not follow the red light or the stop line. In order to help the traffic officer move around, remote controls have been installed at 170 junctions.
Vehicle interceptor system
The vehicle interceptor system (VIS) has a 360-degree rotatable ANPR camera and a 2D radar system to capture traffic violations. The advantage of this system is that violations can be captured in static as well as dynamic mode. It can capture traffic violations by parked as well as moving vehicles, the police say.
The traffic police have also introduced a live traffic monitor in collaboration with a private company. It provides real-time information about traffic conditions. It helps the police know about congestion, incidents, and travel times.
This application does simultaneous live monitoring of all 300 proposed junctions covering 1,000 roads by gathering data from the paid service of Google Map and analyses information on traffic flow, speed, and incidents.
Live traffic monitors provide visual representations of traffic, such as colour-coded maps (based on traffic density and obstructions). These visualisations highlight areas of congestion, slowdowns, or incidents, enabling the police to quickly assess the current situation, according to an officer.
City Police Commissioner Sandeep Rai Rathore says, “We have launched yet another initiative called VEERA [Vehicle for Extrication in Emergency Rescue and Accidents]. It is a unique and pioneering effort and a rescue vehicle was made to save road accident victims trapped inside mangled and crashed vehicles. This is for the first time in India that such an intervention was launched.”
