Science & Technology Prelims Plus
Why is in news? 'KAVACH' System in Trains to Prevent Accidents
Safety is accorded the highest priority by Indian Railways and all possible steps, including development of indigenous equipments, are being undertaken on a continuous basis to prevent train accidents.
Indian Railways has indigenously developed an automatic train protection system rechristened as ‘Kavach’ (Train Collision Avoidance System), to prevent accidents due to human error resulting in Signal Passing at danger and over-speeding.
So far, ‘Kavach’ has been deployed for 1,455 Route Kms on South Central Railway with 77 nos. of locomotives. Currently, ‘Kavach’ work is in progress on Delhi-Mumbai & Delhi –Howrah corridors (3000 route Kms).
Other benefits of ‘Kavach’ include controlling speed of trains by automatic application of brakes on approach of turnouts, repeating of signal aspects in cab, which is useful for higher speeds & foggy weathers, and auto whistling at level crossing gates.
At present ‘Kavach’ is being implemented on Indian Railways in a phased manner. Further, ‘Kavach’ does have export potential in future.