Blackberrys to tame B'lore traffic

INSTANT ACTION: Once a vehicle number is entered, owner's all past traffic sins come to light.

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Bangalore: You've heard enough about the city's mad traffic snarls but the city is gearing up to make traffic control more sophisticated.

Now the Bangalore Traffic Police will be armed with hand-held Blackberrys to keep track of every traffic violation.

Another heated argument, another traffic violation – it's another day's work for sub-inspectors like Shantinath, who are waiting to put an end to long days of handing out challans.

But help is at hand. New sleek Blackberrys and wireless printers will be given away to 280 traffic sub-inspectors and inspectors on June 1.

Training is on to show how these machines can be used to track down repeated offenders and pin down violators.

“It’s very easy because its secure and we can trace past violators,” said Sub-Inspector Shantinath B P.

Fact is, the server that connects the machines will have a record of every offence. So once you key in a vehicle number, all the owner's past traffic sins come to light. And he would have to pay up then and there.

“We routinely send by post about 2,000 challans but only 25 per cent of the people pay up and its manually not possible to track all defaulters. The main idea is to start people believing that the law will catch up with them,” Additional Commissioner (Traffic) M N Reddi.

And in the coming months, there's going to be more gadgetry to tackle the city's unruly traffic, like intelligent transport systems, area traffic control, modern signal systems, surveillance camera and road signage.

It’s the first time in the country the traffic control will use hand-held computers.

So next time you want to rush that red signal because you're getting late, better watch out – your past will catch up with you as the blackberry won't even shut down its programme if you are repeated offender, until you pay up.