Emergency buttons flooded with prank presses: Only 18 real distress calls in over 83,000 alerts!

Bengaluru’s ambitious safety initiative, the emergency button and vehicle location tracking device (VLTD) installed in public transport vehicles is facing an unexpected hurdle: prank alerts. Since June 2024, the state transport department’s command centre in Shanthinagar has received over 83,554 alerts, but shockingly, only 18 were genuine emergencies.

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These alerts are triggered whenever passengers press the red emergency button inside school buses, cabs, and public transport vehicles. However, most of these activations were out of curiosity or mischief, especially by students. Over 60% of false alerts were traced back to school and college buses where students pressed buttons while playing, officials revealed.

At present, the command centre, operated by a team of 30 trained executives, treats every alert as potentially serious. Each notification includes the real-time vehicle location and the owner’s contact details, and the colour-coded system displays the vehicle status, with orange indicating distress. Despite this efficient setup, the overwhelming volume of false calls is exhausting the team’s resources and could potentially delay genuine responses.

Additional Transport Commissioner BP Umashankar stated that the centre receives around 700 to 800 alerts daily, the majority of which are prank or accidental presses. Only 10-15% of legitimate complaints involve rash driving or speeding, and a minimal 3-5% are related to thefts.

The system is integrated with the 112 Emergency Response network, ensuring genuine cases are quickly escalated. However, the misuse threatens the reliability and trust in the system.