Guest Column: Radar speed guns should be backed with effective enforcement

The Radar Speed Sign Boards (RSS) installed in the city as part of a pilot project is a good move by the traffic police to keep a check on speeding drivers. This is also good for the drivers, who have a tendency to neglect the speed limit sign boards. Now with the RSS in place, the gun measures the speed of the approaching vehicle and displays it for the driver, who can then see if he/she is going over the limit.

But a mere display of the message will serve no purpose. For this technology to be effective, it needs to be backed by credible enforcement. Besides displaying the recorded speed of a vehicle, the device could,for instance, automatically generate a challan if it is going over the limit.

For this, the radar gun and the display board would have to be equipped with a camera to capture the overspeeding vehicle and save the picture in a database along with the speed of the vehicle. Also, before installing more radar guns, the traffic police should carry out a study to see the before and after impact of their presence on speeding vehicles and the rate of accidents. The speed profile of the vehicles should be checked and the change in the statistics before and after deployment of the radar guns recorded.

When we installed dummy cameras as part of a study to check overspeeding, we found that as soon as they were removed, things came back to square one.