The city is all set to observe ‘no honking’ day on Saturday.
The initiative by the traffic police and the State transport department will include fining motorists who use high-decibel horns and an education campaign to highlight the impact of noise pollution.
In 2012, the traffic police booked over 10,000 cases and collected a fine of over Rs. 10 lakh from violators of decibel norms. The permitted decibel level is 91, and air horns are prohibited.
Traffic police officers said they regularly conducted raids along with the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board to identify those in violation of the law.
Statistics show that the highest number of cases in the city was recorded in the south traffic district, where 3,217 cases were booked last year. The west traffic district followed with 3,116 cases.
A total of 2,290 and 1,476 cases were booked in the north and east traffic districts respectively.
The drive on Saturday will also see the police conducting an awareness campaign to educate motorists.
“Officers will distribute pamphlets at traffic signals on the harmful impact of horns,” said a senior police officer.
Meanwhile, the State transport department is also taking steps to curb the use of air horns. From January 8 to 21 this year, field officers in all the 11 zones in the State found 1,235 vehicles plying with high-decibel air horns, which they then removed.
“In Chennai’s south zone, 104 air horns were removed from vehicles and in the north zone, 16 were removed,” said a transport department official.
