The Kerala Motor Vehicles Department has come up with a new plan to get drivers to adhere to traffic rules: by putting up a new type of traffic camera that will help catch those who slow down for the cameras, but tend to speed otherwise. The new cameras will record the time taken by the driver to cross the distance between the cameras.

“Unlike surveillance cameras usually seen on the highways, these speed control cameras are installed at a specific distance from each other. They will capture images of speeding vehicles and send it to a central server in Kochi. The images will then be printed and analysed to nab the offenders,” said Transport Commissioner K Padmakumar.

The Department plans to install these cameras across the state.

“For now, we have installed them on highways across the state. Today, we even inaugurated the cameras in Thiruvananthapuram city. The move came after we received complaints about illegal bike racing happening in the city at night,” said the Commissioner.

A penalty of Rs 400 will be charged for those who speed. On the other hand, the speed limit of vehicles on the state’s highways will also be increased from 80 to 90 kms per hour.

There will be separate traffic control rooms set up to monitor speeding vehicles.

“The control rooms are handled by Kudumbasree workers, who will print and send images of speeding vehicles to our office. We are also planning to set up another server in Kozhikode city,” Padmakumar added.

In the case of those vehicles which are already under the police scanner, the control room will pass on the message to the traffic police. The numbers of those vehicles which are marked by the police will also be fed to the control room servers.