To curb road accidents, the State government has procured one speed gun for the Road Transport Authority (RTA) in Tirupati and two each for the Tirupati Urban and the Chittoor police departments.
According to RTA officials, the new gun, costing ₹7 lakh each, is an improved version and photographs over-speeding vehicles from a long distance.
“The new gun has been capturing nearly 200 pictures every day and give details of location, and photograph number plate and driver. We have to just set the speed limit in the gun and let it do the work,” said Road Transport Officer (RTO - Tirupati) G. Vivekananda Reddy.
Speaking to The Hindu , Mr. Reddy said a detailed action plan was formulated to deploy officials for manning the guns meant to reduce accidents due to over-speeding.
The transport officials are focusing on highways leading to Chittoor, Kadapa, Puttur, Srikalahasthi and other accident-prone areas.
“Statistics indicate that nearly 20-30% of accidents are due to over-speeding. By setting up the guns, we want to reduce the number of accidents, besides educating motorists,” he said.
“We also want to automatise the process of photographing violators and generating e-challans, so that the present system of manually uploading data on violators on the transport department website will be done away with,” he added.
According to Motor Vehicle Inspector (MVI) B. Suresh Naidu, the transport department had identified several spots, including prominent ones on the Chandragiri-Puthalapattu highway, and set up speed limit signs.
‘100 violations daily’
“At present, data [on violators] is being stored in the instrument and downloaded through a pen drive for generating e-challans. This process will soon become automatic and be linked to the transport department’s website. As many as 100 such violations are being recorded every day and we are confident that visible policing would yield results,” he said.
Drivers of over-speeding vehicles are fined ₹400.
