30 pelican signals come up in Hyderabad

 HYDERABAD: City police commissioner C.V. Anand inaugurated a pelican signal crossing at Tank Bund here on Wednesday. Along with this, 29 pelican signals in different parts of the city, funded under the Safe City Project, became operational simultaneously.

All signals will be operated by volunteers, who will give a window for the public to cross the road safely by turning the signal red in both directions to stop vehicles.

Pelican signals are used to stop traffic and allow pedestrians to cross the roads at locations other than intersections and are designed to improve safety of both pedestrians and drivers.

Anand said that police and GHMC teams had worked in tandem to identify the locations for installing the signals.

“Though pelican crossings are common abroad, here we have noticed that many drivers don’t stop at these signals. So we had to train a pool of volunteers to operate them,” he said.

“Improved accessibility for people with disabilities or mobility impairments, increased visibility of crosswalks to drivers, regulated and safe flow of traffic are the key benefits from this unique engineering measure,” added Anand.

He distributed 100 body-worn cameras to traffic frontline officers, which will help them record their interactions with the public during enforcement, accidents and other incidents.

“The feed from these cameras can be seen live from the traffic control room. This will improve transparency and accountability in traffic management and help keep a check on undesired behaviour of both the violators and enforcement officers,” he said.

Anand also distributed kits to traffic constables and home guards and rugged tabs to patrol officers to attend Dial 100 emergency calls, screen suspects and keep a close watch on history-sheeters using internal applications and geo-spatial features and access department’s data in real time.