KUALA LUMPUR: Nearly half a million summonses were issued by the Kuala Lumpur traffic police to road users in the federal capital for beating the red light last year.
Kuala Lumpur traffic police chief, ACP Mohd Nadzri Hussain said of the 491,479 summonses, 78 per cent were caught committing the offence by the Red Light Surveillance Camera System (RLSC) installed at 17 hotspot junctions in the city while the rest were detected directly by traffic policemen on duty.
"Summonses for the same violation from January to March this year increased by 29 per cent when 142,039 summonses were recorded, compared to 110,021 during the same period last year," he told Bernama Monday.
He said there were 51 accidents due to beating the red light last year while from January to March this year, there were 11 accidents with one death reported.
Mohd Nadzri said 240 traffic policemen were on duty to control the traffic in the federal capital daily, with focus during peak hours from 6am to 10am and from 5pm to 9pm.
"We are also monitoring accident-prone spots and will recommend to (the federal police headquarters in) Bukit Aman to install more RLSC cameras there," he said.
Meanwhile, Malaysian Institute of Road Safety (Miros) director-general Prof Dr Wong Shaw Voon said the proposal to increase the number of RLSC cameras was the best initiative to discipline road users and encourage them to obey the traffic light.
He said studies by Miros in several countries using technological applications such as countdown timers had been proven to reduce traffic offences by between 40 and 90 per cent as they keep drivers calm while waiting for their turn.
