Bengaluru: The transport department has proposed a real-time, 24x7 global positioning system-based tracking and monitoring system for public vehicles to ensure safety and security of women, students and other travellers. This will help officials and medical team to respond to emergencies on time, curb speeding and allow easy enforcement.
A recent bus accident in Mandya, in which over 30 people died, has been a wake-up call for the transport department.
From January 2019, public vehicles, including cabs and buses, will have to be equipped with location-tracking devices and emergency buttons.
“The new system is needed as it will serve various purposes, including the safety of passengers. It will help monitor vehicles and to see whether they are operating within the permitted area, whether the safety precautions for women are taken and whether vehicles are delivering goods to a predetermined spot,” a transport official explained. The vehicle location tracking (VLT) device will be installed in all vehicles and it will send out pulses every 20 seconds, which will be tagged and certified. The particulars of a vehicle will be accessed from Vahan software.
“If there is any deviation from the route or any other problem, the control room will be alerted and an SMS will be sent to the vehicle owner and law enforcers. The panic button cannot be tampered with as any attempt to do so will set off an alert at the control room. The driver will get a separate panic button and there will be hooters in vehicles to alert occupants. Owners of public service vehicle have to ensure that VLT devices installed in their vehicles are in working condition and regularly send required data to the corresponding backend system through mobile connectivity,” the official said.
VLT device manufacturers will assist in providing backend services for monitoring. The bill, Motor Vehicles (Vehicle Location Tracking Device and Emergency Button) Order, 2018, is being brought in to ensure the safety of passengers, especially women, the official said.
Transport department officials said that the state has two crore vehicles, including 78 lakh in Bengaluru.19 lakh are transport vehicles, of which 7.7 lakh are in Bengaluru. 45 lakh vehicles, including 4.9 lakh transport vehicles, are more than 15 years old.
