In a viral video, it is seen that commuters have been pushing a stranded ready-mix concrete truck to clear the traffic along the Pune Airport to the Lohegaon road on Wednesday.
The concrete mixer, which broke down near Kalwad on Wednesday evening, around 8 pm, caused traffic congestion and a vehicle pile-up stretching around four kilometres in both ways of the road.
Moreover, the traffic was affected on both sides, which affected traffic movement along the Jail Road, 509 Chowk, Viman Nagar, and Tingrenagar Road.
Following the increasing traffic jam, and unavailability of cranes at the time, several commuters took on the responsibility to clear the jam.
In order to address the rising traffic congestion, the Pune City Traffic Police recently launched an Artificial Intelligence-based traffic violation detection system to automatically identify and penalise violators on Fergusson College Road from May 29. So far, in the last 40 days, the AI cameras have issued 2,290 challans.
Speaking to The Free Press Journal, Manoj Patil, Additional Commissioner of Police, said, "The response of AI cameras is good. After their installation on this particular stretch, we don't need manpower, and the good thing is that 99 per cent of these challans were issued to first-time offenders in recent days. This indicates the growing awareness and deterrence among regular commuters."
