igilant citizens have led to the prosecution of more than 40,000 traffic offenders ever since last December when the Delhi Traffic Police offered rewards like cars and foreign trips to those who submit pictures and videos of violators in action.
While the Delhi Police are yet to fulfil their promise about the rewards, the initiative ‘Traffic Sentinels’ has seen participation of more than 5,000 persons in just a little over 100 days since it came into effect.
These sentinels have actually reported as many as 78,471 suspected traffic violators so far, but the traffic police analysed the evidence to find 40,597 of them suitable for prosecution, Muktesh Chander, Special CP (Traffic), told The Hindu .
“If we manage to recover the penalty amount from each of these offenders, the vigilant citizens will have helped us collect at least Rs.40 lakh even if we assume that each violator was penalised only the minimum of Rs.100,” Mr. Chander added.
The response so far, however, has not really impressed Mr. Chander who conceived this initiative. “Given how frequently we come across traffic violations, there should have been many more sentinels capturing violators on their mobile phones,” he said.
He believes that any motorist can capture on the phone a minimum of two traffic offenders even while just waiting for the traffic signal to turn green. “Maybe the sentinels are discouraged because of the difficulty associated with uploading pictures and videos on our application,” he said.
As per this initiative, people can capture traffic violations and send them to the police through an app called ‘Traffic Sentinel’. While still pictures will suffice as evidence against most violations, some like red light jumping, dangerous driving and using phone while driving require videos as evidence.
There are separate reward points for reporting different violations. Driving against the flow of traffic, for example, will fetch you five points whereas reporting a defective number plate earns you one point.
If you accumulate between 25 and 100 points, you will be rewarded with caps, T-shirts or movie/ dinner coupons. However, the real draw is the bumper rewards such as a Maruti car, a Honda motorcycle and a free foreign tour for two.
For now, a Najafgarh-based woman Kavita Tholia leads the rewards points table with more than 3,000 points in her kitty. Ever since she lost a cousin in a road accident two years ago, she spends a few minutes everyday capturing traffic violators on her phone.
Even as the sentinels may have been showing enthusiasm, the bureaucratic speed with which the files related to the rewards are moving has not been very encouraging.
While Maruti is apparently ready to provide the police with a car for the bumper draw, the necessary permissions are yet to be granted. Senior officers say that the delay from the police’s end is also because they want to wait for many more sentinels to qualify for the bumper draw before they pick the winners.
As of now, only around 150 sentinels qualify for the bumper draw, which requires one to accumulate more than 100 reward points.
“If not the bumper draw, we are trying to speed up the process of giving away at least the smaller rewards like T-shirts and coupons for now. We will also try to hold the bumper draw within the next couple of months,” said a senior officer.
Out of around 78,471 suspected traffic violations, 40,597 of them are suitable for prosecution
