We revalidate AI fines manually, says Bengaluru traffic chief

The inaccuracy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) traffic cameras in Bengaluru in detecting seat belt violations became a talking point at an online forum recently.

On August 1, the r/CarsIndia forum posted about a man who was allegedly given false tickets because AI traffic cameras could not tell the colour of his seat belt from his shirt — both appear off-white to beige in the photos shared.

The post does not specify the exact location or date of the incident but suggests the man could have been wrongly fined twice. It has two photos, numbered Ticket 1 and Ticket 2. Cartoq, a portal for automobile news, inferred the same. “It looks like the same car driver was issued a false ticket or fine twice”, it wrote in an article discussing the incident.

The same article spoke of gaps in tech surveillance. The AI traffic cameras installed in Kerala were reportedly reading the vehicle registration number incorrectly, leading to wrongful challans, it added.

M N Anucheth, joint commissioner of police (traffic), said the department is aware of the shortcomings of AI traffic monitoring and is revalidating such challans manually.

The AI-based system was adopted in December 2022 and was in operation for a year without any human
validation on the backend. The contactless surveillance was only 97% accurate, which is why they decided to reconfirm the violations between December 2022 and 2023 manually.

“Now we manually validate every violation image that is raised by the AI and issue the challan only if found correct. The falsely identified images are fed back to the system to improve our Machine Learning (model). We have reached 99.9% accuracy. Some human errors may still exist,” he added.

To dispute a wrong fine

1) Write to bangaloretrafficpolice@gmail

2) Visit the Traffic Management Centre on Infantry Road.

3) Download the Karnataka State Police (KSP) app on Android or iOS. The KSP app has an option to view a challan and raise a dispute.