Hyderabad first city in India to have 30 pelican signals for pedestrian safety

Hyderabad: Hyderabad has become the first city in India to install state-of-the-art pelican signals. Thirty pelican signals, funded under Safe City Project have been made operational in Hyderabad.

The move is likely to ease the woes of pedestrians who have been facing severe issues during peak issues. It will also mark a significant milestone in enhancing pedestrian safety.

City Police Commissioner CV Anand inaugurated a pelican signal at Upper Tankbund. This system allows pedestrians to cross the roads at locations other than intersections and is designed to improve safety for both pedestrians and drivers.

Improved accessibility for people with disabilities or mobility impairments, increased visibility of crosswalks to drivers, and regulated & safe flow of traffic are the key benefits derived from this engineering measure.

Anand said police and GHMC teams worked in tandem to identify the locations to install these signals.

“Many road crossing systems like a foot over bridges got into disuse for various reasons as many of them lack awareness, disregard to road rules. Pelican crossings are common abroad. In our city, we have noticed that many drivers don’t stop at these signals. So we had to train a pool of volunteers to operate these signals and man these points, which is the first time in India.” he said.

All these signals will be manually operated by the volunteers and will give a window of 15-20 seconds for one to cross the road safely by turning the vehicular signal red in both directions.

Sharing the status of other components of the Safe City Project such as CDEWs, Bharosa centers etc, he said that most of the facilities will start functioning in the next 15 days.

Anand appreciated the traffic wing and appealed to the public to cooperate with the volunteers and traffic officers and asked the GHMC officials to expedite installing the remaining signals in Tri-commissionerates.

He also issued 100 body-worn cameras to traffic frontline officers. Cops can record their interactions with the public during enforcement, accidents, and other incidents.

“The feed from the body-worn camera can be seen live from the Traffic control room. This will improve transparency and accountability in Traffic Management and keeps a check on undesired behaviors from the violators and the enforcement officers,” he said.

“This also helps to exonerate officers when false claims are made against them,” he said referring to the complaints raised by a few anguished road rule violators.

As part of welfare activity, CP Anand distributed kits to traffic constables and home guards. The kit consists of raincoats, rain boots, Glucose packets, Water bottles, and Sunglasses. He also distributed rugged tabs to patrol officers which would help them to attend Dial 100 emergency calls, screen suspects, and keep a close watch on history sheeters using internal applications and Geo-spatial features and access the department’s data in real-time.