Drones, though, stop working if it is foggy or it rains, say critics.
Independent surveillance of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway has detected 4,185 over-speeding violations in 30 hours as against 41 such violations earlier found over a period of 48 hours by drones. Tanmay Pendse, the brother of Marathi actor Akshay Pendse — who died in an accident along with his colleague and famous theatre actor Abhyankar Pendse on the Expressway last year — conducted the survey.
The survey was conducted along with the Maharashtra State Transport Development Corporation (MSRDC) and Pune state highway police from 8 pm on Tuesday to 6 pm on Wednesday, using CCTV cameras in three lanes. “CCTV is being used after the experiment with drones as we realised that drones were not working when it was foggy or it had rained. Instead, CCTV cameras have proved to be more resilient than drones and have shown a success rate of 99 per cent,” said Mr Pendse.
A BMW driver, who had reached a speed of 174 kmph on Tuesday night, recorded the highest over-speeding limit. “The BMW was the highest, but then 99 per cent of violations were over 80 kmph. This speaks volumes about the driving habits of motorists,” Mr Pendse added.
The state traffic department had conducted a similar survey using drones last weekend and found only 41 violations over 48 hours as images of most licence plates were too blurred due to rain, fog and precipitation.
Now, even the traffic department is of the view that CCTV cameras are a better choice. “Drones seemed technologically advanced, but this surveillance has proved that CCTV cameras are superior in terms of traffic monitoring. Drones are impractical not only because they are susceptible to changes in weather, but also because we have to keep changing batteries every 15 minutes and each drone requires one man to pilot it. So, for 50 drones over a period of 24 hours, we would require 150 personnel trained to handle these gadgets,” said a traffic official requesting anonymity.
The Mumbai-Pune Expressway has seen 15,000 deaths since 2006.
