DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN SMS BASED ROAD TRAFFIC OFFENCE TRACKER AND PROFILING SYSTEM (STATISTICS PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
ABSTRACT
Federal Road Safety Commission Act, Cap 141, Law of the Federation of Nigeria 2007 (FRSC Act, Cap 141, LFN 2007.) has mandated FRSC Operatives to seize, suspend or disqualify from driving on Nigeria’s roads, any recalcitrant Road Traffic Offenders (RTO), who is adjudged to have accumulated 25 or more penalty points from the road traffic offenses. However, due to lack of access to road traffic information, the mandate has never been implemented to date. In this dissertation, we set out to re-engineer FRSC Patrol Operations. Our objective is to provide the
FRSC Field Operatives with ubiquitous access to road traffic offenders’ information from the patrol locations. We analyzed the old FRSC record management system; we re-structured the data on road traffic and designed ‘An SMS Based Road Traffic Offense Tracker and Profiler, called (Tracker), which solved the problem of access road traffic offense information for the FRSC Operatives. Global System for Mobility (GSM), Short Message Service (SMS), Java, Android, Extensible Mark-up Language (XML), PHP and other relevant technologies were used to implement the Tracker. The Tracker had been successfully implemented and tested with knocked-off RTO data from Federal Capital Territory, Abuja (FCT, Abuja).
It is found worthy for use by FRSC, as it is working correctly and capable of receiving, processing and replying users’ requests, not only from Nigeria, but from all over the world. The
Tracker offered the FRSC Operatives real time ability for tracking and profiling the road traffic offenses, vehicle and vehicle owners’ and implementation of the RTO Penalty Points for the disqualification or suspension of recalcitrant motorist.
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.0Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Road traffic administration is a complex and crucial issue as it involves managing people and vehicles as well as movement of people and properties on the road. Vehicular movement most often causes road traffic crashes that usually bring about loss of human and material resources. Road traffic management requires information on road users‟ vehicles and their owners. There is also need for a good road traffic information management system that is capable of processing and disseminating of the information as fast as possible to the road traffic law enforcement agents in order to equip and empower them to discharge their duties with increased diligence.
In Nigeria, law enforcement agents, particularly road traffic enforcement agents lack access to information on road users especially information pertaining to road traffic offenders, vehicle and drivers when carrying out their statutory functions from the duty posts. Nigerian road users‟ are aware of these inadequacies especially if one look at the act of lawlessness by these road users. Disobedience to Road Traffic Rules and Regulations (RTRs) has reached an unprecedented level of unacceptability. The lack of information has been a hindrance which affects the effectiveness of law enforcement agents, and is therefore no more acceptable if we consider the level of advancement in the area of information management and technology especially in the area of mobile computing. FRSC (2010).
