Maharashtra government will soon deploy drones on Mumbai-Pune Expressway to monitor , identify and control vehicles breaking traffic rules.
According to Deepak Kesarkar,Minister of state for home (urban), Mumbai-Pune expressway has become a "death trap" with a large number of road casualties reported of late.
"Incidents of road accidents have increased due to indiscipline and rash driving. We do not have control over rash driving as the length of the express way is long and there is insufficient police staff for surveillance," Kesarkar said.
He said while there is a need to control vehicular traffic, doing so by using a CCTV camera has its own limitations. Thus, the idea of using drones has been mooted.
"The drones will be used at load line of the 'ghat' on expressway where setting up of CCTV cameras is not possible," he said.
A meeting was held between officials of the Home department and Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation earlier this week at the Mantralaya here, which was attended by Kesarkar and PWD (undertakings) minister Eknath Shinde.
The government will initially deploy drones on Mumbai-Pune Expressway on pilot basis. If the experiment succeeds then the experiment may be extended to other stretches.
(With PTI inputs)
