The anti-collision test conducted by the Indian Railways to check the indigenous developed digital system ‘Kavach’ to avoid rail accidents is "successful", Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who oversaw the test, said on Friday.

Hon'ble MR Shri @AshwiniVaishnaw witnessed the successful trial of 'KAVACH'- an indigenously designed Automatic Train Protection system.

Signal Passing at Danger (SPAD) test demonstrated how KAVACH restricted locomotive to cross red signal.#BharatKaKavach pic.twitter.com/v2d9HQutGJ

— Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) March 4, 2022

The minister said that in the rear-end collision test, 'Kavach' automatically stopped the train before 380 metres of other locomotive at the front.

The minister also shared a video from inside a train that was part of anti-collision test conducted by the Indian Railways in Secunderabad.

The video shows the train travelling at high speed. The Kavach system intervenes automatically as there is a locomotive on the track ahead and brings the train to a halt.  

In the test being carried out the driver is supposed to be reducing the speed and then bringing it to a halt but since he does not do this despite the warning the Kavach system takes over automatically and stops the train to avoid a collision.

The indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection system, known as Kavach, has been designed to help the Railways achieve the target of "zero accidents".

Kavach', which literally means armour, is being promoted by the Railways as the world's cheapest automatic train collision protection system.

The system will bring trains to a halt on its own when the digital system notices any manual error like "jumping" of the red signal or any other malfunction, senior officials said.

It works on the principle of continuous update of movement by using high frequency radio communication.

Announced in the 2022 union Budget as a part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, 2,000 km of rail network is planned to be brought under the indigenous world-class technology 'Kavach', for safety and capacity augmentation in 2022-23.

The first field trials on the passenger trains were started in February 2016.