The new artificial intelligence-enabled traffic violation detection system launched by the government to curb traffic rule violations and accidents has been plagued by teething troubles in the first week since its formal launch on June 5.
The system has generated 24,990 e-challans till June 12 against the capacity to generate 25,000 e-challans a day. The system has been detecting over 40,000 traffic violations a day since the roll-out of the project.
However, technical issues are delaying the detection of cases and generation of e-challans. A Motor Vehicles department (MVD) official says traffic offences detected by the cameras are forwarded to the ITMS (Intelligent Traffic Management System) soon after processing, which then generates e-challans with links for paying the fine online.
“There is a delay in the entire process and we have asked the National Informatics Centre to fix the issues. However, it will take at least two to three months to get the system streamlined. Some of the images detected by the cameras were not violations. For instance, a driver in black shirt would often be detected as driving without a seatbelt. But only a manual scrutiny can ascertain whether the driver had worn seatbelt or not,” he says.
“There were a lot of similar issues. So, before generating legal notices, the offence has to be screened, analysed, and attested by officials, which is a time-consuming process for the time being. We are hopeful that these issues can be sorted out in a time-bound manner. This is the first AI-enabled traffic offence detection system launched in the country to rein in traffic rule violations. Each technical issue is a challenge for us now and once a proper system is in place, we will be able clear the backlog of daily cases being detected by the system,” officials say.
They say the lion’s share of cases detected by the system are helmetless riding followed by driving without seatbelts. For errant motorists, the delay in getting legal notice does not mean that the system is defunct or the offence is not detected. “If one is a habitual rule violator, legal notices may reach home in bunches,” they say.
