After a review meeting on Thursday, Transport Minister Antony Raju of Kerala announced that the AI-enabled video surveillance system established to detect traffic violations has caught the vehicles of 19 MLAs and 10 MPs.
The Minister denied the claim that the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) gave VIPs special treatment, noting that one MP and MLA had six and seven traffic violations, respectively.
The traffic surveillance system has identified 328 government vehicles, including those driven by MLAs and MPs, as having violations of traffic laws. Raju refused to give any information, but said that the MLAs and MPs had been pulled over for offenses like speeding and driving without a seatbelt. All traffic violators received e-challans, he claimed.
Read More: Vimeo Introduces AI-Powered Script Generator And Text-Based Video Editor
Since the project’s launch on June 5, traffic offenses totaling 32.42 lakh have been found as of Wednesday. 15.83 lakh violations out of the total had been validated by the department. 5.89 lakh of these violations were uploaded to the Integrated Transport Monitoring System, which has already issued 3.82 lakh challans.
Despite having challans filed for a total of 25.81 crore, the department has only been able to collect 3.37 crore. The agency was considering a suggestion to not renew insurance for anyone who did not pay the fine. The Minister stated that the department would shortly have a conversation with insurance providers about this.
After the traffic surveillance system was put in place, there was a significant decrease in traffic accidents. 313 persons lost their lives in 3,316 traffic incidents in July 2022, but that number fell to 67 in 1,201 accidents in July 2023. In comparison to the 3,992 injured in July 2022, only 1,329 persons were hurt at this time, according to Mr. Raju.
