Mumbai, (The Hindu): The Traffic Police have registered a record 80,000 cases of speed limit violation in March, thanks to the 47 high-tech speed cameras across the city. On December 31 last year, 40 of the 47 cameras installed were made operational, while the remaining seven were activated in February.

The Hindu had on January 2 reported how the cameras equipped with automated number plate recognition (ANPR) technology had enabled the police to fine 7,600 motorists for exceeding speed limits last New Year’s eve, as opposed to 2,000 offenders the previous year.

Record figure

“We took action against around 30,000 errant motorists each in January and February, and the figure went up to 80,000 in March. This is a record figure,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Amitesh Kumar said. The ANPR camera captures the number plate of the errant motorist and sends an alert to the Traffic Police control room, after which a link is sent to offenders, either via SMS or the police’s MTP app, if the violators are using it. The link contains an e-challan and a picture of the vehicle when it crosses the prescribed speed limit at a particular location.

While police officers declined to reveal the exact locations of the cameras as it would defeat the purpose, they said a majority of them have been installed on the Bandra Worli Sea Link, Eastern Freeway, and the Marine Drive. The bulk of the cases registered this year have also been observed on these stretches.

“Collecting fines is still a challenge, as not every offender pays up immediately. When we first started using the speed cameras, the collection was nearly at 25%, and is now at 51%. When we were manually penalising overspeeding motorists, we had an 80% collection rate and efforts are on to reach the same rate with speed cameras. We hold periodic nakabandis to find motorists who are yet to pay the fines specified in e-challans,” Mr. Kumar said. The e-challan system has also streamlined the process of collecting fines. “As everything is based on the camera feed, the offence and its details are recorded along with pictures, and can not be refuted by motorists. It also eliminates the scope for corruption,” Mr. Kumar said, adding efforts to increase the number of speed cameras in the city are on.