Indian Road Sign Detection — an API Built for Indian Roads

Praveen Amancharla — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 18:31:08 +0000

Most traffic sign recognition systems are trained on European or US sign datasets. They don't work on Indian roads.

India follows its own standard — IRC:67-2012 from the Indian Roads Congress — with over 100 sign types across mandatory, prohibitory, warning, informatory, and hazard marker categories. The shapes, colors, and symbols are different from Western standards.

On top of that, real-world conditions make detection harder: faded paint, dust, non-standard placement, night glare, rain.

I built an API that detects 78 of these IRC sign classes from dashcam imagery.
⸻
What It Does

Upload a dashcam frame, get back detected signs with type, confidence, and bounding box coordinates.

78 IRC sign classes — mandatory, prohibitory, warning, speed limits, hazard markers, informatory
96.7% mAP50 accuracy on real Indian dashcam footage
~0.2 second inference per image
Speed limit values — detects the specific speed (40, 60, 80 km/h)
High precision — tuned to minimise false positives in real Indian road conditions ⸻ The 78 Classes Category Count Examples Warning 34 go_slow, school_ahead, pedestrian_crossing, falling_rocks Prohibitory 14 no_entry, no_parking, one_way, overtaking_prohibited Speed Limit 9 20, 30, 35, 40, 50, 60, 80, 100, 120 km/h Hazard Markers 8 chevron boards, object hazard, two-way hazard Mandatory 7 keep_left, keep_right, roundabout, sound_horn Informatory 5 free_left, give_way, stop, height_limit

Full class list: GitHub repo
⸻
Quick Start

import requests

url = "https://indian-road-sign-detection.p.rapidapi.com/api/v1/detect"
headers = {
"X-RapidAPI-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
"X-RapidAPI-Host": "indian-road-sign-detection.p.rapidapi.com",
}

with open("dashcam_frame.jpg", "rb") as f:
response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, files={"image": f})

for sign in response.json()["detections"]:
print(f"{sign['sign_type']} — {sign['confidence']:.0%}")

Response:
{
"detections": [
{
"sign_type": "maximum_speed_limit_40",
"category": "speed_limit",
"confidence": 0.98,
"bbox": [412, 85, 498, 192],
"ocr_value": "40"
}
],
"inference_time_ms": 187
}

⸻
Who Is This For?

ADAS / autonomous driving teams — speed limit enforcement, sign-aware navigation for Indian roads
Fleet management companies — automated compliance monitoring across routes
Insurance telematics — risk scoring from dashcam footage
Road infrastructure mapping — sign inventory from street-view imagery
Driving schools and assessment platforms — automated evaluation
⸻
Pricing
Tier Calls/month Price
Basic 100 Free
Pro 5,000 $12/mo
Ultra 50,000 $49/mo
Enterprise Unlimited Contact us
⸻
Links
Try the API: RapidAPI — Indian Road Sign Detection
Live demo: skotantrx.com/demo.html
GitHub (docs + samples): github.com/amanchap/indian-road-sign-detection
⸻
Built by SKO TantrX — Break the Old. Build the Bold.

Tags: #ComputerVision #AI #DeepLearning #ADAS #IndianRoads #RoadSafety #API #MadeInIndia

DEV Community: Praveen Amancharla

Indian Road Sign Detection — an API Built for Indian Roads