THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state cabinet gave its nod to the Safe Kerala project aimed at reducing road accidents and curbing traffic violations. The project will be spearheaded by the Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA) and motor vehicles department (MVD).
Safe Kerala aims at MVD using state-of-the-art technology for enforcing traffic rules, thereby reducing road accidents. The project will be executed by Keltron with the funds sanctioned by KRSA. The total estimate for the project is Rs 232.25 crore.
The cabinet decided to constitute a monitoring committee for Safe Kerala to periodically (once in three months) inspect the functioning of tools and equipment installed at various centres for the project execution. This committee will be headed by additional transport commissioner and will have IT experts from Kerala State Information Technology Mission and a lecturer from the IT or computer department of the Sree Chitra Thirunal College of Engineering as its members.
The committee will ensure that defunct cameras are replaced within a stipulated period and annual maintenance is done of all the cameras and other equipment used for this project. The cameras under this project will be set up in places where the police cameras are not installed. It will ensure that the data and feeds collected from these cameras are given to the police if such a requirement arises. All cameras under the project will be functioning under artificial intelligence.
A coordination committee will be constituted to oversee the progress of the project and will be headed by an additional chief secretary. The committee will have transport secretary, law secretary, heads of police, MVD, excise and GST departments as its members.
With the execution of this project, the inspection of vehicles on roads will come to an end. A fully-automated traffic enforcement system will come into existence to replace conventional methods. Presently, 726 such cameras have been installed in the state. Helmetless travel, travel without seat belts, vehicles fleeing after accidents (hit-and-run cases), etc, will be identified using these cameras.
Besides, there will be cameras to find out illegal parking, over-speeding, red light violations, etc. In all districts there will be control rooms to monitor these cameras.
