Electronic surveillance to prevent highway mishaps

Pilot project in Prakasam to help avoid unauthorised parking of heavy vehicles

The Prakasam police have taken up a pilot intelligent vehicle detection sensor project to make the arterial Chennai-Kolkata highway safer for travel.

As many as 972 mishaps occurred in the district so far this year leaving 367 dead and 1,295 injured as against 1,006 mishaps in 2016 which left 387 dead and 1,342 injured.

An analysis of the mishaps in the last two years shows that it is the unauthorised parking of vehicles on the national highway that is responsible for a majority of the rear-end collisions on the expressway as head-on collisions have become a thing of the past with the six-laning of the highway, as part of the Golden Quadrilateral project, points out Superintendent of Police B. Satya Yesu Babu.

Though eight police vehicles have been deployed on the 124.5 km stretch of the highway in the district, we find it practically impossible to prevent unauthorised parking by heavy vehicle drivers, particularly during the dead of night.

Hence the pilot project to ensure electronic surveillance of the highway to detect unauthorised parking of vehicles, especially near motels, and prevent mishaps.

Sensor alert

Explaining the working of the anti-parking system, the SP says the sensor installed after taking into account the dimensions of heavy vehicles identifies the vehicles parked for more than three minutes and sends alerts through sirens/SMS/calls to the control room and the patrolling vehicle concerned for removal of the vehicle.

A CCTV put in the place gets immediately activated for the police personnel at the command control system to monitor till the vehicle is removed from the place by rushing the nearest patrol vehicle to the spot, adds the SP in a conversation with The Hindu .

Accident-prone spots

“We have identified 40 accident-prone places with geo-location on the highway for installation of the system in phases after fine-tuning it based on field experiences,” says the SP after satisfying himself with the working of the system installed on an experimental basis on the margins of the highway on both sides at Martur.

Maintaining a WhatsApp group comprising all night patrolling staff, the department is conducting ‘stop, wash and go’ programme for the drivers of vehicles to prevent mishaps, adds DSP (Traffic) J. Ram Babu.