THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state government has claimed a sharp fall in the number of road accidents and accident deaths in the first month since the AI cameras started issuing challans to traffic rule offenders.
Transport Minister Antony Raju said on Tuesday that the number of accidents in June this year registered a 65% dip and accident deaths 60% fall compared to the corresponding period last year. After the AI cameras started issuing challans to traffic offenders on June 5, the state registered 140 deaths from 1,278 accidents, while there were 344 deaths in 3,714 road accidents in June 2022.
The minister claimed 204 lives were saved by the presence of AI cameras. However, road safety experts warned that it was too early to make such a claim.
The Motor Vehicles Department installed 694 cameras across the state as part of the Safe Kerala Project to detect and slap penalties for offences such as bikers not using helmets and overloading, car passengers not fastening seat belts, drivers using mobile phones, jumping red signals, overspeeding, and dangerous and illegal parking.
The cameras have detected over 20 lakh offences, but Keltron, which operates the cameras, managed to process only 7.5 lakh. The MVD generated 1,28,740 challans for nearly Rs 8 crore. People have paid over Rs 81 lakh for the challans generated, so far. The camera project was initiated with the intention of reducing road accidents and reducing physical traffic enforcement with the help of technology.
The minister has been claiming the effectiveness of cameras in reducing traffic offences even before the MVD started enforcement using them. “It is too early to say that AI cameras have brought down the number of deaths,” said T Elangovan, former executive director of Kerala Road Safety Authority.
‘Traffic offences have come down’
“We cannot jump to conclusions just by comparing the accidents for a month. The accidents are usually less in June when people reduce their travel for various reasons. But I can agree that the number of offences has come down,” said Elangovan.
Road safety expert Anil Kumar Pandala said the claims by the minister should be verified independently. “At the most, there shall be a 10% reduction in traffic offences. It all depends on how you want to show the data. Over a period of time, more and more people will get caught and slowly it will percolate as a discipline. But if they are making such a claim in one month they are either trying to fool people or they are lying,” he said.
Just four days into the activation of the new AI camera network in the state, the MVD had reported a significant drop in traffic accident deaths. Daily fatalities that used to be 12 on average had come down to seven. The number of daily traffic violations, which was around four lakhs during the trial period, came down to below one lakh since June 5, according to the MVD data.
The minister said that the road safety commissioner has been tasked to form a district-level monitoring committee to ensure that innocent people do not have to pay fines.
The Complaint Redressal Application to submit complaints online will be effective from August 5. As the information on vehicles registered in other states is included in the NIC’s Vahan software, fines will also be levied for their violations, said Raju.