Smart Surveillance Vans in Kathmandu Valley. Image Credit: Facebook

Smart Surveillance Vans to Maintain Road Discipline in Kathmandu Valley

Metropolitan Traffic Police Division (MTPD) has come up with a new plan to reduce the traffic rule violations— Smart Surveillance Vans to maintain road discipline.

Kathmandu Sustainable Urban Transport Project had handed over two smart surveillance vans to MTPD on July 23 during a function organized to mark the fifth anniversary of Metro Traffic FM 95.6 MHz.

According to MTPD, the smart surveillance vans are equipped with four roof-mounted 360-degree fish-eye CCTV speed cameras and a Breathalyzer. The cameras can capture live video from a distance of up to 1.5 km. The smart surveillance vans will assist traffic cops in initiating evidence-based action against rule violators.

Apart from these fancy features, the smart surveillance vans also include eight cozy seats, a 32-inch LED screen, first-aid kits and portable road dividers. These smart surveillance vans are mainly deployed to curb over-speeding and driving under influence, which are the major reasons for increasing road accidents in Kathmandu valley. More than 180 people were killed in road accidents in the Valley in the fiscal 2016-17 compared to 166 in the previous fiscal.

MTPD had booked more than 639,600 vehicles for violating traffic rules in 2016-17 compared to 548,470 in 2015-16. Traffic rule violations documented every year is on the rise. And the reason behind this is said to be the increasing number of vehicles plying on the Valley roads. On an average, 10,000 motorists are caught violating traffic rules every month.

The disregard for lane discipline and traffic signals, use of mobile phone while driving, parking vehicles in the no-parking zone, seat belt infraction, mechanical modification of bikes, overloading vehicles, drunken driving, overtaking from the left side of the road, and violation of one-way traffic rule are the common forms of traffic rule violations. Violation of lane discipline tops the chart of offenses and bikers are mostly ignorant about traffic rules.

There have been so many new traffic rules hitting the Kathmandu Valley roads lately including the ban of honking, fining the jaywalkers, banning free parking inside metropolis, fining errant motorists, and many more.

The highest number of vehicles—31,533—faced legal action for violating lane discipline whereas 29,080 vehicles were fines for haphazard parking in 2016-17. A total of 28,896 drivers faced the music for drunken driving as 9,663 vehicles were fined for honking unnecessarily.

Let us know what you think about the smart surveillance vans hitting the valley roads.

 

Reference: The Himalayan Times