Thiruvananthapuram: Indian roads draw blood literally as over 150,000 lives are lost annually in vehicle accidents. About 450,000 vehicle accidents are reported from the country every year, with the State of Kerala too contributing a fair share. The central government has directed the State to reduce road accidents by 50 percent by curbing overspeeding by making use of real-time camera tracking technology.
Nearly 4,000 lives are lost and over 40,000 injured on an average in vehicle accidents in Kerala every year.
Important roads in Kerala are being brought under the scanner of artificial intelligence-based cameras with the objective of reducing road accidents by half within two years.
Safety experts say traffic rules could be enforced more effectively once the software which evaluates violation of traffic rules and imposes fine automatically comes into being. Once the violation is captured on the camera, the footage will go directly to the central government’s server.
The vehicle owner will receive an SMS from the central server regarding the fine to be remitted for the violation and the information will also go to the special court simultaneously.
This limits the scope of influencing authorities to break free from the penalty.
High speed and over speeding are the main causes of accidents on Kerala roads. Even though changes were made in the speed limit on the national highway and other major roads in 2018, Kerala is still following the speed limits that were notified in the 2014 order. The speed limit for all vehicles near schools is 30 km/hour.
