Delhi to get more traffic cameras to detect violations going mostly unpunished so far | Latest News Delhi

The Delhi Traffic Police is in the process of installing 328 new cameras with features that will detect multiple violations simultaneously—including helmet-less riding, driving without seatbelt, using a mobile phone—and even track vehicles by their appearance, senior officers aware of the development have said.

The new cameras will plug into a system through which challans are generated automatically, help catch those driving on the wrong side, and – in a first – catch two-wheeler violations that existing cameras cannot at the moment.

Traffic police officials said the new cameras are likely to be installed and become functional by June this year.

“The new cameras that we are in the process of procuring and installing have many added features. It will reduce human intervention in traffic violation detection and issuing challans. The manpower involved in such jobs will be used for traffic regulation, which will certainly improve vehicular movement and ensure lesser traffic snarls on the city’s roads,” said special commissioner of police (traffic zone-2) Ajay Choudhary.

These new devices will nearly double the number of traffic cameras deployed across the national Capital from 334 to 662, and will help the traffic police minimise deployment of personnel for manual checks.

Of these 328 new cameras, 203 will be installed at 57 locations as part of the Red-Light Violation Detection (RLVD) project, while the remaining 125 cameras will be for the Over-Speed Violation Detection (OSVD) project, and will be installed at 76 locations. RLVD cameras, as the name suggests, are mounted at key intersections while OSVD cameras are aimed at open stretches where speeding is often a problem.

Currently, Delhi has 209 red light cameras at 43 locations, and 125 speed cameras at 66 locations.

According to the Delhi Road Crash Report-2023, the Capital recorded 5,834 road crashes in 2023, and 1,457 people died in these accidents. An analysis of fatal and non-fatal road crashes involving cars and two-wheelers revealed that many were the result of violations such as driving the wrong way, not wearing helmets and seatbelts, jumping red lights and triple riding, said additional commissioner of police (traffic headquarters) Satya Vir Katara.

“Existing cameras only detect limited violations such as overspeeding, red-light jumping and zebra crossing violations. We felt the need for cameras that could detect more traffic violations. We held meetings with several companies that manufacture and sell cutting-edge technology-based cameras. The companies gave demonstrations of their products, and that helped us update our requirements,” said Katara.

The additional CP said the cameras will also include vehicle recognition features which will, for instance, help track suspects in hit-and-run cases. “In case a suspect flees in a vehicle, the colour of which is known, the advanced cameras will detect vehicles of the same colour moving on the same routes. Such filtering will help identify and catch the offending vehicle. It can detect multiple traffic violations of one vehicle and accordingly generate challans for each violation,” Katara said.

The new cameras will also generate evidence in the form of photographs and small videos, in cases such as speeding and wrong way driving violations, said deputy commissioner of police (traffic) SK Singh.

Singh said the new cameras will be able to detect traffic violations by two-wheelers as well, a feature that was not available in most of the already installed traffic cameras.

Additionally, the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) feature in the cameras will help authorities identify 10-year-old diesel and 15-year-old petrol vehicles that are banned in the city.

“Our traffic personnel would analyse the data of such old and banned vehicles captured by the cameras and would accordingly take action as per the norms,” Singh said, and added that installation of traffic violation detections cameras is part of the Delhi Traffic Police’s project.

Additional commissioner of police (traffic zone-2) Dinesh Kumar Gupta said two companies – Gurugram-based Envoys Electronics Pvt. Ltd and South Delhi-based Aabmatica Technologies Pvt. Ltd – have been shortlisted as they gave the lowest quotations during the tendering process. Envoys will install the red light cameras while Aabmatica has been selected for installing the speeding cameras.

A senior traffic police officer, who asked not to be named said that the initial estimated cost of the project’s phase-2 was ₹95 crore. However, during the tendering process, the two competed with each other and revised their quotation multiple times for two days to secure the tender.

Dr S Velmurugan, chief scientist and head of traffic engineering and safety division of Central Road Research Institute CRRI, said challans cannot act as deterrent if compliance is not improved.

“Two violations in particular — triple riding and wrong side driving — especially impact road safety. The system should be linked to a point-based system so that people who are repeat offenders can be restricted from driving vehicles. Repeat violations in certain categories should impact the licence of the user,” he said.