There has been a considerable drop in fatal road accidents in the State after the implementation of the artificial intelligence-enabled (AI) motor vehicles surveillance cameras, Transport Minister Antony Raju has said.
Speaking to the media after a review meeting of the AI-enabled traffic violation detection project here on Tuesday, the Minister said there were a total of 3,714 road accidents in the State in June 2022. However, it dropped to 1,278 in June 2023 after the installation of the camera surveillance system.
In June last year, 344 people lost their lives in road accidents, while this time, it was reduced to 140. Similarly, in June 2022, a total of 4,172 people were injured in road accidents and this time, it dropped to 1,468. This is a clear indication that the new vehicle surveillance system was effective in reducing road accidents, said the Minister.
Meanwhile, new traffic enforcement system implemented as part of the Safe Kerala project has detected as many as 20.42 lakh traffic violations in just one month. Of this, 7.41 lakh violations have been processed till July 3. Of these, 1,77,694 violations were transferred to National Informatics Centre’s (NIC) Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS) for creating e-challans.
Out of the generated challans, 1,04,063 were sent to violators by post. Among the violations, 73,887 people were fined for helmetless riding, followed by 30,213 helmetless travel by pillion riders. A total of 57,042 cases were registered for not wearing seatbelt by co-passengers in the front seat, while 49,775 cases were registered against drivers for flouting seatbelt rules.
Also, 1,846 cases were registered for using mobile phones while driving and 1,818 cases were on charges of triple riding. Keltron has been directed to avoid the delay in processing violations detected by AI cameras. The backlogs in the cases would be processed within three months by pressing in more staff, said Mr. Raju.
Grievance redressal
The Minister also said that a grievance redressal platform for the public to file appeals and lodge complaints related to traffic violations detected by the cameras will come into force on August 5. Apart from the grievance redressal platform, the Kerala Road Safety Authority has been directed to form a district-level committee to deal with appeals of the public regarding violations detected by cameras.
Information on vehicles registered in other State is also made available in the database to detect traffic rule violations, said the Minister.
The 16 cameras which had to be removed in connection with road-widening will be reinstalled by July 31. A meeting of various stakeholders will be held soon to determine the exact no-parking areas, and no-parking boards will be set up in such places to detect parking rule violations, he added.
