The next time a traffic cop catches you for a violation and you try wriggling out citing lack of cash, it won’t work. The Bengaluru traffic police have gotten ‘smart’. Embracing the cashless trend, they have replaced their old Blackberry phone sets with Smart Personalised Digital Assistants (S-PDAs), which will facilitate cashless fine collection.
As a pilot project, a few personnel in the Central Business District have been given S-PDAs, which will not only help them record a violation, but also enable them to offer a cashless option for payment of fines. As many as 650 gadgets costing ₹10 crore will be issued to inspectors, sub-inspectors and assistant sub-inspectors in due course.
According to a senior police officers, Blackberry phones were introduced in 2008 to make the process of booking of violations more transparent, on-the-spot fines and detecting repeated violations. But over 90% of the sets have become outdated.
ADVERTISEMENT
The new device resembles a card swiping machine. It has a touch-screen interface, reads credit/debit cards and has an integrated printer to print challans.
“We can use them to click pictures of violations. The S-PDA has a Global Positioning System (GPS) to record the location and the time where the offence was committed,” said City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood.
"The machines are devised to read and display data from the new smart cards being issued by the Transport Department, which have an embedded chip," he added.
ADVERTISEMENT