Safe Drive Save Life campaign was launched a year back throughout the state by Hon’ble Chief Minister who during a review meeting emphasised on consistent effort to reduce road accidents and improvement of traffic infrastructure. Besides observing Road Safety Week, West Bengal Police has evolved modernisation of infrastructure for minimizing road accidents through more effective traffic management.
Like previous year, West Bengal Police has observed Road Safety Week this year from 3 to 8 April throughout the state. This has been quite successful with the active participation of school children, youths, local clubs and NGOs. Consistent efforts to create awareness on road safety and traffic rules have crafted impact on the minds of drivers. Likewise, these have been able to change the mindset of pedestrians since children and youths have come forward to make Road Safety campaign a great success. The number of road accidents has significantly come down with the observance of Road Safety Week throughout the state.
A metro like Kolkata has always been congested due to its huge human and vehicular traffic population. But other cities and towns in the state now have become thickly populated and number of vehicles has also been increasing with the changing situation. So to better manage pedestrian and vehicular traffic, Commissionerates across the state are equipping themselves with modern gadgets and instruments. More than 4000 CCTV cameras have been setup at several intersections which help in live monitoring of the situation.
Speed guns, breath analysers, RLVD and ANPR cameras, are some of the devices which provide the technical hand in better traffic management. These devices cumulatively work to form the Integrated Traffic Management System(ITMS) which commenced operation in October 2014. It is the nervous system of the Traffic control Room. All the raw data – texts, photos, video clips, etc. collected from the installed and handheld devices are stored in dedicated servers which can be viewed and assessed by the ITMS. Soon the West Bengal Traffic Headquarters will be equipped with state of the art central control room which will be interlinked to all the field units. Once it is functional, the police officers will have real time video feeds of the locations.
With passage of time, automation technologies are more and more incorporated. Earlier compound slips were handed out manually to the traffic violator. But now Howrah and Bidhannagar Traffic Police use a Tablet PC and a portable Bluetooth printer to generate the compound slip. Some officers also use a consolidated portable device which includes the terminal with a screen and the printer to give out the compound slips for traffic violations.
