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Speeding in Chandigarh at night? Beware, you can be caught on camera

HT Correspondent | ByRajanbir Singh
Nov 28, 2019 01:40 AM IST

Three systems to read number plates and issue challan automatically to be put in place

CHANDIGARH Cracking down on speeding vehicles even as 94% traffic fatalities in the city were due to over speeding in 2018, the traffic police is procuring three specialised systems with night vision cameras to read number plates at night and issue challans automatically. Known as automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) overspeeding systems, these will be put to use by mid-December, officials say.

Confirming the development, senior superintendent of police (SSP), traffic, Shashank Anand said, “The system is being procured. Challans will be issued at night.”

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The ministry of roads transport and highways (MORTH) in a recent report bracketed timings of a majority of accidents between 6 pm to 9 pm and 9 pm to 12 midnight.

Explaining the need for such a system, Anand said, “The volume of traffic greatly increases during this time. People are in a hurry to reach their destinations. The traffic police manually controls the traffic at some of the busiest intersections and we carry out drunken driving nakas and red light jump checks, but over speeding nakas are needed as well.”

Being purchased by the traffic police through the government e-market, the systems will cost 20 lakh. Inspector Ashok Tuli, one of the officials responsible for the procurement, said, “The systems are already in place in Andhra Pradesh and are receiving positive feedback from there. They have ANPR technology cameras which can read the number plates of vehicles. The cameras have night vision and can read the number plates of vehicles at a distance of 50 metres at night. The range greatly increases during the day.”

Challans will be issued automatically by the system which will identify the number plate of the speeding vehicle through battery powered cameras that can be mounted on a tripod or attached to a vehicle. The traffic police have issued over 8,346 challans for over speeding this year till now, Tuli added.

Happy with the move, road safety activist Harpreet Singh said, “Right now there is a perception in people’s minds that we can drive over the speed limit at night which is very dangerous. If rules are enforced strictly this will definitely bring down the number of accidents in the city.”

The only drawback of the system is that it might not be effective in dense fog conditions. However, vehicles tend to drive slowly then so the number of accidents are not high, officials said.

According to the the MORTH report, only one of the 98 fatal accidents took place on a foggy day when visibility was poor.

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