Bengaluru traffic violations: Of fines, rebates & the need to finetune camera tracking

The tracking of traffic violations is on course, but system glitches and non-compliant vehicle users pose a problem.

Last week, Adithya Shukapuri was left confused as he was notified of a parking violation wrongly recorded against his vehicle. On closer examination, he noticed that the actual offender was using a vehicle with a similar sequence of letters and numbers.

When he tweeted about the wrong entry, tagging Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP), he was advised to email details. A week later, Adithya awaits a response.

This is not an isolated case. Anjan received three challans against his Royal Enfield bike’s registration number. On checking camera images, he realised they were of a Honda Activa with similar-looking number plate, flouting rules in HSR Layout-Koramangala. He emailed BTP last Saturday about this. On Friday, BTP responded, assuring corrective action in 4-5 days.

In some cases, people have noticed that registration numbers in the images were theirs, but not vehicles.

Read | Will create database of fake number plates: Bengaluru Traffic Police

On February 5, Shashank Udupa tweeted - “Vehicle shown in the image is not at all mine and I don’t know who is riding it. Image shown is of a bike whereas mine is a scooter without gear. But that number is mine. Is this kind of a new scam?’

Hithaishi was baffled to know that another vehicle had her bike’s number. Six months ago, she was intercepted by traffic police near Kothanur because pillion rider was not wearing a helmet. She found violations, with a fine amount of Rs 3,000, registered against her bike. “After concession, I paid Rs 2,800, but when my father checked last week, violations were still not cleared,” she said.

The BTP notified a concession period, between February 3 and 11, allowing violators to pay pending fines at 50% rebate. While many said they were charged for offences they didn't commit, others were concerned about lack of official response and worried they might miss out on discount.

M A Saleem, Special Commissioner of Police (Traffic), said official responses would be emailed once requests are processed and verified.

“Too many emails and queries are being processed. It is difficult to address all at once,” he said. He requested people to be “patient” because the verification involved several hundreds of cases.

Saleem admitted that there is a margin of error due to incorrect reading of numbers or phone numbers not being updated at RTOs.

Between 200 and 250 complaints were about fake number plates, which is also helping BTP build a database. “We will begin tracking down perpetrators once the concession period is over,” he said.

The BTP has advised people to pay fines applicable only to their vehicles and ignore wrongly entered “offences”. It is also planning a drive to identify non-compliant number plates.

Ashish Verma, professor of transport systems engineering at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and convenor, IISc Sustainable Transportation Lab, traced number plate mix-ups to flawed systems & non-compliant vehicle users. “The AI must improve, but it also has to do with people using non-standard number plates. RTOs must enforce standard plates,” he said.