Modern technology and enhanced surveillance across national highways for curtailing road safety violations
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will implement advanced traffic management system (ATMS) with real-time tracking of safety violations and simultaneous issuance of challans for enhancing surveillance and road safety across all national highways with four or more lanes totalling 30,000 km in the next 2-3 years, according to senior officials of NHAI.
The ATMS installation on a stretch of 56.46 km of Dwarka Expressway in the national capital region has been concluded, senior NHA officials told a group of journalists during a visit organised to the command and control centre of the Dwarka project.
This stretch is the maiden project to be executed under the revised policy for ATMS brought out in October 2023 that enhances enforcement across 14 categories of violations such as triple riding, helmet and seatbelt violations, wrong lane or direction driving, presence of animals on the highway, and pedestrian crossings..
'The focus of the new policy is to incorporate enforcement in addition to surveillance and integrate the police department so that challans can be issued. Earlier the end-user was NHAI, now it is the enforcement agencies,' explained one NHAI official who didn't want to be quoted.
The new policy allows local police to generate e-challans through an API [Application Programming Interface]-based system that enables software applications to talk to each other.
'A specific incident about a road safety violation is created at our centre. Subsequently, the National Informatics Centre, which is the technology partner of the Central government, pushes this information to the police department and a challan is generated,' the above quoted official elaborated.
On June 26, IHMCL also wrote to Delhi Police to start issuing challans based on the ATMS installed on Dwarka Expressway.
The ATMS system ensures the highways are enabled with technology for 'real-time intelligence and incident management and analytics,' according to a handout from the IHMCL.
Implementation of the ATMS system is already underway for other projects, which include Delhi-Agra Expressway, Lucknow Ring Road and the upcoming third ring road for New Delhi, the Urban Extension Road 2 (UER-2). A stretch of 20,000 kms was equipped with an older ATMS prior to the 2023 guidelines.
At Dwarka Expressway, the ATMS system is supported by 110 pan-tilt-zoom cameras with each camera at every 1 km for real time monitoring that are also equipped with basic AI intelligence to detect accidents and breakdowns. There are also 15 Video Incident Detection and Enforcement Systems (VIDES) or a system of cameras installed on gantries with each such system deployed at a distance of 10 km which is capable of detecting 14 kinds of violations with high level of accuracy and is further connected to NIC and police departments. VIDES also allows vehicle counting and classification for monitoring traffic data. There are also six Vehicle Acutated Speed Display on LED screens at intervals of 20 km that use radar based detection to warn road users if they are nearing the upper speed limit and serves as a speed calming measure. Ten variable messaging sign boards or screens have also been installed for real-time updates to road users on traffic conditions, diversions, weather, and incidents to improve driver awareness.
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