Coimbatore: 164 traffic cams linked with national vehicle registry

COIMBATORE: For the first time in the state, the city traffic police have linked 164 surveillance cameras to the Union government’s vehicle registry, Vahan.
The cameras, including the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras at 20 major junctions in the city, will send pictures of traffic rule violations including helmetless riding, red light jumping and triple riding to the National Informatics Centre’s (NIC) servers.Traffic police officers will login to the Vahan website to verify the pictures and give approval to issue online challan.
Four more city polices including Chennai and Madurai will link cameras to the registry soon.
The city police had installed the 164 CCTV cameras on Avinashi Road, Trichy Road, Mettupalayam Road, Sathyamangalam Road and Palakkad Road with the help of NGO Uyir.
The cameras sent traffic violation pictures to the servers at the office of the assistant commissioners of police, deputy commissioner of police R Mutharasu said. “Till now, traffic police personnel downloaded the pictures to check the offences. Later, they would upload the challans on the Vahan website, which would send them as SMS to the vehicle owners. Now as the cameras are linked to the NIC, the pictures will be sent to the NIC servers. After cops verify them, challans will be uploaded automatically in Vahan. The cameras capture about 25,000 traffic violations every day,” said Mutharasu.
The city police are planning to conduct an official launch ceremony in the first week of November.