Drones to Help Control Iranian Road Traffic

Iran is planning to use drones to control road traffic as of the second half of the current Iranian year (starting Sept. 23).

“Traffic in parts of Iranian roads will be controlled by drone technology,” deputy minister of roads and urban development, Shahram Adamnejad, was quoted as saying by IRNA on Thursday.

“If the plan proves successful, we will use this technology on all roads of the country.”

Iran has turned to modern traffic management to control its roads where over 20,000 people are killed and 800,000 people are injured in accidents every year, according to Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Research Center affiliated to Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University.

Abdolnasser Hemmati, the head of Central Insurance of Iran, said road accidents cost Iran about $3 billion every year, which is 4% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Mehdi Hamidi, the head of Traffic Police with the Law-Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said each casualty in road accidents costs the country, directly and indirectly, about 12 billion rials ($317,000).

This comes as the rate of road mishaps has dropped by 38% over the past decade, due to the use of advanced technology to control traffic and the motorists, among other reasons.

In the past two years, 2,200 surveillance cameras were installed across the country to improve the monitoring of arterial suburban roads to 30,000 km from 5,000 km in 2015.

Adamnejad said 600 cameras have been planned to be installed by the end of the year (March 20, 2018), half of which has so far been installed. Roads account for a majority of passenger and cargo transportation in Iran.