Acoustic cameras to detect vehicles creating sound pollution

Hyderabad, April 21: To put a stop to unnecessary honking and sound pollution, Hyderabad traffic police are planning to use acoustic cameras to detect vehicles that honk beyond permissible limits.
Traffic chief AV Ranganath held a trial run of acoustic cameras of Acoem company of France, at control room junction on Wednesday. For the first time in the country, these type of cameras are being used in Hyderabad.
According to Moto Vehicle Act, vehicles horn and silencers’ sound is allowed up to 80 decibels. The sound of fancy horns and silencers are causing inconvenience to others. Especially, its becoming a big problem when people blow horns after green signal flashes at traffic signals. MAUD Minister KT Rama Rao had noticed this and directed the traffic officials to curb this menace.

With the help acoustic camera, vehicle causing sound pollution could be detected and traffic police can file a case. But the traffic officials felt that this would be difficult for implementation. Hence it was decided to link up acoustic cameras with automatic number plate recognition system. With this, the cameras will identify the vehicle number also. Fine will be generated electronically to the vehicle owner.