CHENNAI: The Transport Department plans to introduce a more effective system in the Regional Transport Offices to test those who apply for learners licence.

It has been put in place in the Regional Transport Office, Perambur, on an experimental basis, , a senior official of the department told The Hindu .

Before the system was introduced in the Perambur RTO, the question paper was manual. After computerisation, a large question bank is available from which a set of questions can be accessed. Computerisation also helps to change the set of question papers as and when necessary. An applicant has to give the correct answers for six out of the 10 questions to get through.

The system, introduced a few months ago, is user-friendly: even a candidate who is not computer literate will not find the operations difficult. The arrangement has been recently stabilised, and plans are afoot to have it in other RTOs too.

As part of the other measures to ensure road safety, tracks to test applicants before issuing permanent licences are available at 19 places, including Dharmapuri, Tirunelveli, Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur, Dindigul, Perambalur, Karur and Vellore. The facility is nearing completion at Madurai (West). A track is coming up in the RTO (Northwest) on New Avadi Road here.

Another plan is to implement the long-pending proposal of issuing smartcards to drivers. These can be used to punch penalty marks for traffic offences. A prerequisite for getting the cards is introducing computers in all the RTOs. Already 40 RTOs have been computerised, and efforts are on to interlink them.

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