Speeding on Bengaluru roads might sound unbelievable, but our drivers have managed the impossible. Flyovers are popular ‘racing-tracks’ where vehicles travel at upto 120 km/hr in an 80 km/hr limit. Enough is enough, say traffic police. Is RSS (Radar Speed Solutions) the answer to their troubles? The device, which has been installed at the Hebbal-Yelahanka flyover as a pilot, can monitor vehicle speed almost instantaneously. While the traffic police’s tech-savvy ways are commendable, there’s still one glitch: How will errant drives be penalised? Mujahid Deputy reports
It may be hard to believe on Bengaluru’s roads that are choc-a-bloc with traffic, but drivers do manage to speed on them, leading to accidents and more chaos than normal. In fact, overspeeding is a major cause of accidents in the city, especially on its flyovers.
While the maximum permissible speed on flyovers is 80 kmph for cars, most exceed this limit, with some even driving at over 120 kmph, according to the police. Official records reveal that as many as 54,086 people were booked for overspeeding in the city till July this year. As for intra-city roads, signal jumps have remained a major concern for the police with 2,67,127 being booked for the offence in the first seven months of this year alone.
A senior police officer laments that it is impossible for the police to keep a tab on speeding vehicles with just interceptors as there are not enough of them in the city. And with the number of vehicles increasing in Bengaluru with every passing year the task has become even more difficult.
Going by the transport department there was an eight per cent rise in the registration of vehicles in 2017-18 , taking their number on the roads to 75 lakh (as on May 2018). While it can do nothing to stop the registration of vehicles, the traffic police is now trying to ensure they can at least be stopped from speeding.
It is experimenting with Radar Speed Signboards (RSS) that have been installed on either side of the Hebbal-Yelahanka flyover to record the speed of oncoming vehicles and warn them if they are going over the speed limit. While this is a pilot project, the RSS boards will in future be installed at 50 spots in the city including the Bhadrappa layout, Tumkur Road, NICE Road stretches and Old Airport Road to help the police check speeding and accidents.
An officer explains that the sensor-based RSS has the ability to read and display the speed of a vehicle in the blink of an eye from a distance of 50 meters. “The signboards are effective and accurate and help the police monitor and fine the drivers of overspeeding vehicles,” says Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) R Hitendra. He , however, adds that there will be no fining of overspeeding vehicles tracked by the RSS for now.
Says a senior police officer, “The RSS technology will ease our work and help us achieve the goal of achieving a low accident rate.” The police aim to create a database for three months under the pilot project, before it is extended to other junctions.
What is RSS
RSS is the technology not new to the world. The technology is been widely used the western countries for years and even in India to tap on overspeeding vehicles. The sensor-based RSS has the ability to read and display the vehicle speed with a blink of an eye. The sensor can read the speed from 50 meters. While the RSS installed on Hebbal-Yelahanka flyover is part of a pilot project, the Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) R Hitehendra said that RSS are effective and accurate and help the police monitor and fine the drivers of the overspeeding vehicles if implemented. The police during the pilot project are creating database for three months and will extend the same to other junctions. There would be no fine on overspeeding vehicles tracked by the RSS as of now, he added.
‘Not just about cases and fines, drivers can be responsible too’
While overspeeding vehicles are a threat to lives in the city, traffic experts blame the traffic police too for not installing signboards with speed limits at strategic points to act as a deterrent. And even when the roads have speed limit boards, the poor monitoring gives the drivers the freedom to drive as fast as they want, they point out. “While there are interceptors on highways, intra-city roads have no speed monitoring systems, and hence the speeding,” they say. Road safety experts too have warned of fatal crashes due to missing speed limit signboards, especially in accident-prone zones and they have not been proved wrong.
Going by official figures, as many as 444 people have been killed in road accidents in the city since the beginning of this year and most of them were due to overspeeding vehicles or the driver’s lack of concentration. Most of the accidents and fatalities were reported in the Yelahanka, K.R. Puram, Chikkajala, Devanahalli and Airport Road jurisdictions. While holding the police responsible for not installing speed limit boards, experts do agree that some drive recklessly even after spotting them and give a big thumbs up to technologies like the Radar Speed Signboards (RSS) as they can lead to more effective enforcement of the law. The traffic police, on the other hand, emphasises that it cannot always be all about cases and fines. “Drivers should also behave responsibly, considering the danger they are putting their own lives and those of others into by overspeeding,” stresses an officer .
