‘Our penalty points are a big deterrent to traffic offenders’

What road safety initiatives have you introduced?

Drunken driving was a menace in Hyderabad, and a high number of fatalities used to get registered there. So, we had to launch a drive to stop it. If the alcohol content shown in breath analysers was more than 30ml, we would generate challans. It is totally evidence based and the violators were charge-sheeted, vehicle was seized and counselling was given to the violators.

This year from January to the 31st of August, we have booked about 11250 cases, out of which, about 2000 people were sent to jail through courts for one day to twenty days and about 1000 people were awarded social service punishment like cleaning in hospitals, cleaning in bus stations, and cleaning in railway stations. So, the drunken driving initiative is also proving very effective and it has brought reduction in accidents. For example, last year till August 30, 280 fatalities were registered but this year, in the same period, only 197 cases have been registered. We have reduced 83 deaths this year because of various reasons: one of them is drunken driving, and the other is identifying black spots and taking measures like rumblers, signages, and median setting. As a result, we could reduce 83 deaths this year.

What initiatives has your department taken under the Safe City programme?

We are coming up with ITMS. The government has sanctioned about 1000Cr for 10,000 cameras in Hyderabad City for the programme. All the cameras are high definition cameras and they are installed at all the junctions of the city. That has reduced crime by 30 percent. With the contribution of the community, we have installed 3,500 cameras. So, the offender gets caught by the time he travels for one kilometre. There is no question of escaping. We also produce this evidence in the court of law and the offender gets convicted on the basis of the evidence. So people are afraid to commit offence in Hyderabad City.

In the coming two to three months, we will install another 3000 cameras and in the next two years, we will have 10,000 cameras from the government. But in addition to that, we are getting lot of cameras with the involvement of the community. People are coming up with cameras in colonies and their own houses on their own, just like the London model. In London, for every structure, whether it is a house, mall, or shop, the owner has to put cameras all around. So, that also helps in prevention of crime and gives a sense of security. It is a big deterrent for the offenders.

We have sensors for speed tracking, automatic RLVD and also for number plate detection. All these are embedded in the ITMS projects.

What initiatives have been taken for the parking management systems?

Recently the government has come out with a parking policy. Now the basic aim is to totally do away with on-street parking. We want to have multilevel parking, totally off-street. Another aim is to encourage parking on open private lands in exchange for money. So that way we can relieve the existing carriageways from parking.

How was your experience at TrafficInfraTech Expo? Did you find any product or system interesting that you would like to implement at Hyderabad city?

A variety of products were exhibited for traffic management system and security systems. I found a roller barrier system very interesting. There were VMS board system, and mobile VMS boards among many other interesting and informative solutions.