bengaluru it has been more than three years since the centre mandated installation of vehicle location tracking devices vltds and emergency buttons for public service vehicles psvs registered on and after january 1 2019 but the response in techsavvy karnataka has been poorvltds and panic buttons have been affixed in only 4989 of the 295 lakh psvs in the state in maharashtra the devices have been fixed in 49172 vehicles followed by delhi 35508 uttarakhand 17369 chhattisgarh 16603 himachal pradesh 14369 and goa 9674 across the country around 16 lakh vehicles have the devicestimes viewmany bengalureans including women rely on cabs but most appbased aggregators have failed to set up call centres to address their concerns its a shame too that the government has neither ensured gps trackers and panic buttons in public vehicles nor put in place a centralised control room in coordination with police state transport undertakings like bmtc should also implement the facility as it can be used to track overspeeding vehicles identify errant driversand reduce accidents it is high time the authorities woke up and put passenger safety uppermostin 2020 the centre formulated automotive industry standard ais 140 to standardise the specification of the gpsbased tracking device and emergency buttons across the country under the nirbhaya frameworktransport department officials said vltds and emergency buttons are a must in all new public transport vehicles including buses school vehicles and cabs however autorickshaws are exempted for now also karnataka is yet to establish a monitoring centre to track vehicles and attend emergency calls on being pressed the panic buttons will send out alerts during emergencies speedingrash driving and in case of harassment or misbehaviour said an officialas of march 31 2022 there are 28 crore vehicles registered in karnataka including 1 crore in bengaluru of the 28 crore 295 lakh are psvs passengers especially women are more vulnerable in closed vehicles this system will help us monitor vehicle movement location overspeeding etc in fact there have been several cases where passengers have been harassed by cab drivers said an officialtracking of bmtc buses a pipe dreammany bmtc bus users complain that tracking the vehicles on a realtime basis remains a distant dream in march 2021 bmtc issued a work order to a consortium of manipal group and amnex infotechnologies at a cost of rs 373 crore the project includes fitting two cameras each in 5000 buses 5000 vehicletracking units vtus 500 passenger information system display boards and a new mobile app with womensafety features however it is yet to be ready officials said they will launch the app by november 2022 in kerala the transport department has launched a mobile app vidyavahini to help parents track school buses a majority of buses in kerala are now equipped with gps systemswe require around rs 20 crore to set up a vehicle monitoring centre to track vehicles and also to attend emergency calls of the total cost rs 12 crore has already been sanctioned by the centre under the nirbhaya