Applying thought (not from Wipro :)

Ain’t you annoyed at times when you see people so mindless about the traffic rules? A good traffic sense is one that respects other’s freedom to use roads safely. How effective are the institutions that enforce traffic rules and regulations? I think this should be a wrong question at this time. Rather, the question could be, “How effective and how well-equipped are the institutions that enforce traffic rules and regulations?” The rules and regulations that we have are tailored to meet the traffic load prevailed some two or three decades ago. Would that hold good for the current traffic needs? Is not it necessary to upgrade the traffic rule enforcement procedures? While technologies have been applied and being applied in many walks of life, why aren’t traffic police well equipped to provide a well-administered traffic in the cities? I was wondering whether RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology changes the way traffic is controlled in our cities. It could provide a contemporary way to have a unified signaling and vehicle tracking system. To know more about RFID, see How Stuff Works… The need of the hour is to embrace new technologies such as RFID to monitor and track traffic in the city and eventually enforce corrective measures from data gathered using this technology. RFID could be used to create an automated system that integrates signaling and tracking vehicles that breaches the traffic rules. This technology is being used by the manufacturing industry, retailers, and supply chain management firms to track and monitor their goods, inventory, and products. With the help of radio-frequency enabled tags and readers, you can monitor and track the movement of your goods and products. Just imagine the amount of tracking one can leverage from an RFID tag fixed into a vehicle. If this tag could provide you the details of the vehicle’s owner, vehicle’s registration number, owner’s address and name and so on, what else do you require to charge the owner when he offends any traffic rules or breaches traffic signals. Appropriate RFID readers, when fixed strategically at signals and junctions could track and monitor vehicles breaching traffic rules. The rest is assured that you can simply work in the back office to raise a charge sheet and send that to the owner. If not to that extent, you can at least generate an automated charge sheet and summon the vehicle owners for inquiry. Of course, this might have got so many practical intricacies in implementation. However, with proper planning I think this technology could be leveraged to give the traffic police an edge over the burgeoning traffic of Indian cities. This is just a thought that sparked in my mind amidst annoying traffic on Chennai’s Mount Road caused by Traffic-senseless Chennaiites :) (Includes me too…). I do not know whether this dream could come true… However, if it happens, well, I will be the one to feel proud for having this idea well ahead of times…. :)