Policy for e-detection of traffic violations soon across Odisha

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha government is planning to formulate a new policy and issue guidelines to facilitate e-detection of traffic violations and auto debit of fine imposed on violators across the state.Though e-detection of traffic offences has already been introduced at toll plazas of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), it will now also be done across the state.

The government is contemplating to develop the policy guidelines following the recommendation of the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety (SCCoRS). Last month, secretary of the committee Sanjay Mital had visited some districts and reviewed corrective measures initiated to reduce road fatalities in the state.  

Apart from causing accidents, bad driving practices also increase traffic congestion, which is a major headache for motorists and local authorities. Common driving behaviours that typically impact traffic flow include illegal stopping or parking, illegal u-turns and unnecessarily sharp braking at traffic lights and junctions.

A Transport department official said the e-detection of violations has been successful in specific stretches of highways in its pilot phase. A policy and guideline need to be defined for ensuring automatic challan generation of the violators throughout the state, he said.

The Transport department is also planning to implement the system like in Delhi where challan amount is transferred automatically from the bank account of offenders once the e-challan is issued. Even as more than four lakh challans are being issued against various traffic rule violators in a year, the disposal rate is as low as about 27 per cent.

In a bid to reduce traffic violations and make roads safer, the government has decided to enhance the insurance premium of the vehicles of repeat offenders. “The automatic transfer of challan amount will be examined properly before being implemented. We will soon discuss with insurance companies to enhance the insurance premium of habitual offenders to discourage them,” the official said.

It has also been decided to go for treatment of junctions which account for about 24 per cent of fatalities. There are around 8,000 junctions in the state, where the arterial roads merge with the main carriage way. Road owning authorities have been asked to take traffic calming measures at the junctions and provide lighting facilities at the junctions in the rural areas in a mission mode.