Often, while driving or walking down the street, we witness various traffic violations, some of them serious and especially infuriating, and we are frustrated that there is no simple way to document the violation and ensure that it will be handled by the law enforcement authorities. A new Israeli venture is trying to correct this.
Nirsham Ltd. is a new Israeli start-up founded by brothers Shlomo and Elazar Goldman, which has developed a proprietary platform to document and report traffic violations via smartphone app and website.
How does it work? The user can use the app to document various traffic violations by drivers in the area. A long press on the camera key takes a series of high-speed stills that make a continuous record of the incident. While taking the pictures, the user says out loud the vehicle's license plate number. When the documentation is completed, it is automatically sent to Nirsham's servers.
The material received at Nirsham undergoes initial review, and the company then uploads it onto its website. Visitor to site can view the documentation and vote whether, in their opinion, the incident is a "clear violation" or "no violation".
Each incident is available on the website for one week for viewers to vote. If the viewers vote that a traffic violation occurred, Nirsham will file a complaint with the Israel Police, with the aim of bringing the violator to justice. If the motor vehicle belongs to a company car fleet, Nirsham will file a complaint with the company, documenting the violation.
"Israel Police receive 5,000 complaints about traffic violations a year from people who saw them and wrote down the license plate number of the vehicle," Shlomo Goldman told "Globes". "The police have trouble handling a complaint of this kind because it's one person's word against another's. The use of documentation that is as clear as possible and the filing of an official complaint by us, will make it much easier for the police to act against the violators."
When using the app to document a traffic violation, the user can classify the incident in one of four categories: traffic violation, road hooliganism, traffic accident, and traffic hazard. Until now, Nirsham has been operating below the radar, and most of the documented traffic violations on the site have been photographed by 100 users, including the Goldmans.
"We both sit a cafe on one of Jerusalem's streets, and within 30 minutes, we're able to document five or six incidents of running a red light," said Shlomo Goldman. "Our basic idea with the venture is that if enough people use the app, it will become the best surprise and deterrent factors for other drivers on the road."
Nirsham's app is currently available for devices running Android versions 2.2 or higher devices. An iPhone version will be available in two weeks. Both versions are free.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 23, 2012
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