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The Kuala Lumpur traffic police has issued nearly half a million summonses to road users for running the red light last year, according to a Bernama report.

City traffic police chief ACP Mohd Nadzri Hussain said that 491,479 fines were levied in 2015 – out of those, 78% were caught committing the offence by the Red Light Surveillance Camera System (RLSC) that is installed at 17 hotspots in the city. The rest were detected directly by traffic police officers while on duty.

“Summonses for the same violation from January to March this year increased by 29% when 142,039 summonses were recorded, compared to 110,021 during the same period last year,” he said, adding that there were 51 accidents attributed to running the red light last year. Between January and March 2016, the offence caused 11 accidents and one fatality.

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A total of 240 traffic police officers are said to be on traffic control duty in the federal capital each day, with the focus being on peak hours from 6:00 am to 10:00 am and from 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm. “We are also monitoring accident-prone spots and will recommend to Bukit Aman to install more RLSC cameras there,” Nadzri said.

This statement was echoed by Malaysian Institute of Road Safety (MIROS) director-general Prof Dr Wong Shaw Voon, who said that the proposal to increase the number of cameras was the best initiative to improve discipline among road users and to encourage them to obey the red light.

According to Wong, studies by MIROS in several countries have shown that using technologies such as countdown timers have reduced traffic offences by between 40% and 90%, as they keep drivers calm while waiting for their turn to cross a junction.