Kavach. Kavach is an important step towards improving India’s railway safety

Indian Railways is the lifeline of India’s transportation network. Since its inception this vast network has played an important role in the growth and development of the country. Along with this, it has also been a symbol of major and horrific accidents. From the past till now, Indian Railways has witnessed many tragic accidents in which countless people have lost their lives. The government is continuously working to free the Railways from these accidents. In this context, the government with the help of RDSO has developed an indigenous automatic train safety system called Kavach, which will prevent accidents.
What is Kavach?
Indian Railways has developed an indigenous automatic train safety system called ‘Kavach’ (Train Collision Avoidance System) to prevent accidents caused by human error. Indian Railways has developed it through RDSO (Research Design and Standards Organization). Work on this started in 2012. The objective of the Railways behind developing this system was to prevent train accidents. Its first trial was done in the year 2016. According to Railways, this is the cheapest automatic train collision protection system. The technology is Safety Integrity Level 4 (SIL-4) certified, the highest certification level. This means that the chance of a mistake by the armor is only one in 10,000.
Armor symbolizes determination to ensure security
Kavach, India’s indigenous rail protection system, represents a major leap forward in railway modernization and safety. Since 2014, Indian Railways has allocated Rs 1,78,012 crore to enhance safety measures, including: advanced trackside equipment, state-of-the-art technologies and extensive personnel training. Kavach symbolizes Indian innovation and commitment to passenger safety, ensuring a safer and more secure rail network for millions of daily commuters.
How does it work?
The armor uses high frequency radio communications and works on the principle of continuous updates to prevent collisions. If the driver fails to control it, the system automatically activates the train’s brakes. It also applies brakes to avoid collision between two engines equipped with armor systems. As soon as a loco pilot jumps the signal, the shield gets activated. This starts alerting the loco pilot. After this, it automatically starts controlling the brakes. As soon as the system detects that another train is coming on the track, it completely stops the movement of the first train. Its most important thing is that if any train jumps the signal, then the movement of all trains within a radius of 5 kilometers will stop. At present it has not been installed on all routes.
routes under cover
Kavach, the safety system of Indian Railways, began field trials in 2016 and achieved SIL4, the highest safety certification globally, in 2019. In 2020 it was approved as the national ATP solution. Indian Railways aims to deploy Kavach on 44,000 km of tracks. The system has been installed on more than 301 engines and 273 stations. The armor is expected to eliminate deaths caused by human error. Optical fiber installation extends over 4,000 kilometers and 356 communication towers have been installed.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav had given information about the routes brought under Kavach on March 29 in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha. As of March, 1455 km (route kilometres) of network route in South Central Railway has been brought under cover, out of which 576 km comes under Maharashtra State i.e. Manmad (except) – Dhamabad and Udgir – Parbhani section. This is about 2 percent of the total network of Indian Railways. The rollout of Kavach is planned on the New Delhi-Howrah and New Delhi-Mumbai sections with a targeted completion date of March 2024. The total expenditure on development of Kavach is Rs 16.88 crore.

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