‘Aggressive drivers’ to be taken off Abu Dhabi roads, police say

The Aggressive Drivers system used by Abu Dhabi Police monitors motorists for speeding, red-light jumping and other serious offences.

Drivers who commit back-to-back traffic offences will be under the radar. Silvia Razgova / The National

ABU DHABI // A system that monitors motorists who speed, jump red lights and commit other serious traffic offences is in place at Abu Dhabi Police’s smart traffic centre.

The system, called Aggressive Drivers, enables patrols to take offenders off the road to prevent accidents and serious injuries.

The system cracks down on drivers who commit a series of traffic offences within a short span of time.

Capt Marzooq Al Zaabi, the project manager at Abu Dhabi Police’s smart traffic centre, said action against such offenders would be swift because they caused accidents.

“The driver will be immediately taken off the road. We will not wait for him or her to pay the fines during the renewal of the vehicle’s registration.”

Capt Al Zaabi, an electrical and electronics engineer who works at Abu Dhabi Police's traffic engineering and road safety department, was speaking at a Natrans Expo open session in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

As the smart traffic centre’s manager, Capt Al Zaabi is working on projects such as red-light and speed offence systems, smart awareness programmes for motorists, a key performance index system for Abu Dhabi Police, and developing its research and development centre.

“The centre’s mission is to share live data accurately and electronically between road users, the transport department and the police, based on smart city standards, to make our roads safer,” Capt Al Zaabi said.

Transport is one of the biggest generators of big data, a term ­referring to very large sets of data that are computer-analysed for patterns and trends. Real-time statistics are generated from onboard sensors, traffic counters, speed cameras, smartphones and traffic offences.

The smart traffic centre makes use of big data for monitoring aggressive drivers and the distribution of radar; education by designing awareness programmes; engineering for incident detection, truck rerouting and traffic diversion; and emergency response for patrol allocation.

It is linked to various systems, including those that display alerts and warning messages to drivers through electronic signboards, and detects speeding motorists who jump red lights.

“There will be alerts from the centre in the event of fog or low visibility,” Capt Al Zaabi said. “The system will send us alerts and [tell us] how to deal with the traffic incidents.”

Under the Smart Officer system, police officers will be equipped with a high-tech system.

“All data coming from the traffic policemen will be transmitted digitally,” Capt Al Zaabi said.

Dr Essam Selim, a transport consultant and former chairman of the National Railways in Egypt, described the project as progressive.

“Their systems are largely based on data analysis, which should be the case,” he said.

“It may not be perfect at the start but gradually you improve it by feeding in all relevant data.”