Speed guns nail violators

Tirupati: For those travelling on major thoroughfares, a team of government officials equipped with an instrument (speed gun) mounted on a sturdy tripod, has become a common feature! With over-speeding considered as one of the major causes in road accidents, the Transport department, with their recently acquired speed gun, has begun to keep a check on the violators.

The state government has sanctioned five speed guns at a cost of Rs 7 lakh each, two to Tirupati urban police, two to Chittoor police and one to RTA, using which the officials should keep a track of speeding vehicles and generate automatic challans fed into the system.

While police sleuths have been operating these guns in some routes, the Transport department was engaged at some other route mostly outskirts as people normally drive vehicles at abnormal speed on the highways only.

The speed gun can click pictures of an over-speeding vehicle within a kilometre distance and record evidence thereby facilitating the officials to penalise the erring drivers. Tirupati RTA officials laying their focus on various highways by setting up the gun on strategic spots including Tirupati–Kadapa road and Naidupet-Puthalapattu road.

It can capture clear images of driver, vehicle and number plate and helps the authorities to identify speedsters, who should pay a fine said Tirupati RTO G Vivekananda Reddy. He told The Hans India that the data is stored in the motherboard of instrument and the same would be copied to a pen drive to upload in a computer system.

He observed that as the vehicle driver would be caught with photo proof, it may bring a change in their attitude towards over-speed and accidents may come down to 20 to 30 percent. The authorities levy a penalty of Rs 400 on erring drivers and if the pending bill in the Parliament becomes an Act then it will see a multifold increase.

Motor Vehicle Inspector (MVI) B Suresh Naidu has said that they capture nearly 200 pictures every day out of which about 100 cases being filed by them. Simultaneously, police capture some other pictures and they file separate cases at different locations. “As we normally set up the speed gun at accident prone areas people can see that and slow down their vehicle which makes them travel safely,” the MVI observed.

He said that from August 1 to 25, 33 accidents took place in Tirupati urban police division limits and nine persons lost their lives while 48 were injured. Presently, the notices being served manually but the software team of the Transport department is working on it and very soon e-challans will be generated by the speed gun itself taking data through ‘Vahan site’.

“The speed limit signs were erected at places prone for accidents. We noticed more black spots on Naidupet-Puthalapattu highway and on Kadapa road. Hence, we are concentrating more on these places. On an average, we capture nearly 50-60 vehicles per hour which were exceeded speed limit,” Suresh Naidu maintained. Though the department was equipped with speed guns previously, but they failed to capture long distance pictures. There was no such problem with the present cameras, he added.

By Pradeepkumar Vennelakanti