Video of signboard displaying photos of 'traffic offenders' in Chennai is digitally edited

Context

A recent article published by the travel and lifestyle website Curly Tales claims that photos of those who violate traffic rules in Chennai—the capital city of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu— “will be displayed on a big screen along with fine amounts and their car details.” The article also includes two screengrabs from a video that is going viral with similar claims. The video shows a man’s image on a signboard attached to a traffic light. The signboard flashes the text “Crossed Red Signal” and what looks like details of a vehicle. A post sharing the video read, “If you break the traffic rule in Chennai, your face will be projected with the fine (sic)...,” the caption to the viral video read. However, the signboard in the viral video is not real, and the claim made by Curly Tales and social media users that Chennai Police have launched a new initiative to check traffic violations is false.

In Fact

After the video went viral online, the official Twitter account of Chennai Traffic Police on June 23 replied to one such post saying, “It is a graphic video.”

We also ran a reverse image search on one of the frames of the viral video, which led us to the same video posted on Instagram on June 8, 2023, by ‘RiggedIndian”. The caption of the video reads, “This video is a concept video. Signal tracker in Chennai to avoid traffic rules violations. This is a cgi concept video (sic).” Syed Abrar, the admin of the Instagram account, told Logically Facts that the original video was actually shot on the Anna Salai road near Marina Beach, Chennai, and was then digitally manipulated. “The person on the screen is me, and the other person reacting to the screen in the video is one Abdul Razack. The video was shot and edited by our lead VFX/CGI artist, Amir Khan,” Abrar said.

“The video was first posted on June 1, 2022, with the idea of visualizing the concept using VFX(visual effects) and CGI (computer graphics image). The video received over 1 million views,” he added. The video was then reposted again this year and raked up many more views. “We have already mentioned that it is a concept video made with VFX/CGI and is not real, but people still share it as a real video without reading the captions,” he added.

On June 16, the creators also uploaded the video’s VFX breakdown on Instagram, clearly showing that the signboard was digitally created.

The Verdict

The creator of the viral video has clarified that the video was created using visual effects and is edited. Therefore, the claim that photos of traffic offenders will be put up on signboards in Chennai is false.