Bolgatanga — The Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), in conjunction with the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), has developed an automated system, christened, "Traffitech-GH", to streamline the enforcement of road traffic laws and regulations to improve road safety in Ghana.
The automated system will help check the disorder, lawlessness and rampant issues of road traffic carnage and its associated injuries and deaths, as the continuous failure by road users to comply with the road traffic regulations over the years.
Speaking at a stakeholders meeting held in Bolgatanga, capital of the Upper East Region, the Director of Education, Research and Training at the MTTD of the Ghana Police Service, Chief Superintendent Alexander Kwaku Obeng, said the Traffitech-GH system which had been designed by the Ghana Police Service, in collaboration with other major stakeholders in the country, particularly the NRSA, would find the antidote to the ever increasing preventable crashes, "with its attendant damage to property, injuries to persons and the fatalities that come with it".
According to him, the system had deployed cameras and sensors at strategic locations: in vehicles, by the road, among others, and it would automatically take a picture or video of vehicles that flouted road traffic laws and regulations, such as breakneck speeding and running of red lights.
The Traffitech-GH project, he explained, would in addition deploy
fixed, mobile/in-vehicle and radar gun devices to capture speeding vehicles and those that jumped red lights.
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Pictures and videos recorded of the offence are automatically transmitted to a back office for validation and issuance of a notification by SMS to the vehicle owner for payment, Chief Supt Obeng added.
The Upper East Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP), Darko Offei Lomotey, who gave a welcome address on behalf of the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr George Akufo Dampare, said the implementation of Traffitech-GH automation system was going to address the issue of road traffic and related carnage head-on, and pleaded with the public to help in seeing to the full implementation of the project.
On his part, the acting Director General of the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), David Osafo Adonteng, thanked the MTTD for birthing the idea and rolling out the new technology, saying it would enhance enforcement of road traffic laws and regulations, especially with the objective of minimising road crashes, injuries and deaths.
He indicated that although the country had seen some significant improvement in the reduction of road traffic crashes in the first half of 2023, as compared to the same period in 2022, Ghanaians could not boast of the strides, as more than thousands of people had lost their lives following the crashes on the road.
