RFID to put brakes on overspeeding on Pune-Mumbai Expressway

The Pune-Mumbai Expressway,which is causing nightmares to motorists with rising accident rate,promises to offer some relief to the travelling public with a new system based on the Radio Frequency Identification RFID set to be implemented. The RFID system,tasked to monitor lane cutting and overspeeding on the 96-km expressway,has received an in-principle approval of the State Highway Police and will soon be rolled out,officials have said.

The State Highway Police said lane-cutting and overspeeding have the been bane of the expressway,causing numerous accidents in the past few years. A Mumbai-based non-governmental organisation,Fulora Foundation,developed the RFID based system and had submitted its proposal to the State Highway Police and the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation MSRDC,which maintains the expressway.

Dilip Bhujbal,superintendent of police with the Pune division of the SHP,said,The statistics available with us show that lane cutting or overspeeding or both are behind the increasing number of accidents on the expressway. The Fulora Foundation had approached us with the RFID system. We have given it an in-principle approval.

Explaining the system,Arun Sabnis of the Fulora Foundation said,There are eight toll booths on the expressway. The RFID sensors which gauge the location and measure the speed of the RFID tag will be set up at these toll booths and at regular intervals on the expressway.