Not just speeding. What else do photo cameras see on the roads

The absence of vehicles on the road is no longer equal to the lack of control. Belarus is implementing a system that automatically detects violators without the participation of inspectors. These cameras are already able to recognize the passage of intersections at a red traffic light, driving behind the stop line and using the phone while driving. What else can cameras on the roads, we tell on the example of the Minsk region.

In the traffic monitoring department. Cameras of the Republican public security monitoring system monitor the traffic situation around the clock. In order to promptly respond to the violations revealed by it, last year in the capital region a department for monitoring traffic of the traffic police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Regional Executive Committee was created. The room where a group of specialists works resembles a regular office open space. With a small caveat: one of the walls is occupied by a huge screen broadcasting a picture from the regional highways. In the lens of inspectors all the transport arteries of the region.

Andrey Karchan. The capabilities of the system are demonstrated to us by the head of the traffic monitoring department Andrey Karchan. It shows a recording of the driver of the car turning through solid. Or the driver of the minibus goes to the intersection at a red light. Lucky there was no one around, but that doesn't mean you can break. Since the beginning of the year, thanks to cameras in the Minsk region, more than four thousand violations have been established. The main emphasis is on the definition of gross disregard for traffic rules. So, we identified about 1000 violations during overtaking and more than 500 people who, being deprived of the right to drive for drunk driving, again sat behind the wheel, the expert quotes the figures.

Law enforcement officers have a special system, which contains information about all the rightsless. If a car belonging to one of them gets into the camera lens, the system issues an alert. But no one will mindlessly detain a person. First, make sure that the driver is deprived of the right to drive. The camera resolution allows you to zoom in a few hundred meters to see the face.

Victor Jakubchik. - The operator can set parameters for the search, - the senior inspector of the department Viktor Yakubchik connects to the conversation. To identify rightsless people, it is not necessary to analyze the recordings from all cameras, because this is a huge amount of information. It is enough to check the locations where the offender will appear sooner or later, for example, gas stations.

The functionality of the system is constantly expanding. Recently, cameras have learned to identify intruders at railway crossings. The most dangerous of them, where accidents occurred and where many violations are recorded, are equipped with an automatic fixation system.

- There are 26 such moves in progress. We will put them into operation before the end of the year, Andrey Karchan announced. We do not disclose their location for preventive purposes, so that drivers comply with the rules at all railway crossings without exception, and not only at equipped cameras for automatic fixation.

Violation of the rules of stopping and parking is an urgent problem for the capital region. It is characteristic of the villages adjacent to Minsk and large district centers - Soligorsk, Borisov, Slutsk and Molodechno. The most problematic areas are equipped with cameras. Where they already exist, the number of violations has decreased many times. For the correct operation of the algorithms of the program requires a different number of cameras. Depending on what kind of violation you need to fix, explains the head of the monitoring department:

- To detect unpassed inspection, only one camera is needed - to recognize the registration number of the car. And to fix the passage on red – at least five, because you need to fix the moment of entry to the intersection and exit from it. That is, you need to install cameras in all four directions plus a camera to read the number. Watching the monitors, we communicate with the staff of the department. They call interesting numbers. Just think about it: fixation cameras detect 5-10 violations every 10 minutes. And that's just one intersection! Operators specify that we are talking about passing both at a red light and at the switched off signal of an additional section of the traffic light. Algorithms of the program allow to identify various violations. If you generalize, then through the video surveillance system, employees can now remotely identify a wide range of traffic violations - talking on the phone behind the wheel, unfastened seatbelt, driving at a red light, going to the oncoming lane, overtaking violations, not giving advantage to pedestrians, violating the rules of stopping and parking.

There is a monitoring system and a number of other useful features. Among them is the search for the culprit of the accident, who fled the scene. Experts say that with the advent of cameras on the roads, the detection of such incidents has increased significantly, as blind spots remain less and less.

Then more. In the Minsk region, the issue of expanding the functionality of cameras for recording violations by truck drivers is being worked out. It is planned to teach the system to analyze the location of heavy trucks on the carriageway, which often move along prohibited lanes for them, and also to detect the movement of trucks in areas where they are closed.

The main task for the future is to teach the system to detect absolutely all types of traffic violations in automatic mode, that is, without the participation of the operator.

gorbatenko@sb.by