Penalty points system comes into force

Traffic officials say compliance with rules has gone up

A day before the new penalty points system came into force, over 11,000 pending challans were paid up by drivers for various offences.

Anyone who drives a vehicle in the city is familiar with a typical road behaviour. It is one that more often than not brash or rash – be it on the part of the driver of the personnel in uniform.

The city will go down in the history as the first one to initiate the system of penalty points. On Tuesday, the implementation of the system for traffic offences began.

“If a person accumulates 12 points over a period of two years, his/her licence may be suspended for a while or even cancelled and the punishment could even be imprisonment up to three months, ” says Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic), V. Ravinder.

Thanks to the implementation of the new rule, there will be at least 60 to 70 teams of uniformed traffic personnel on the roads, but the focus would be on the evenings when the number of fatal accidents are more.

Enforcement teams

“Each of the 25 traffic police stations in the Hyderabad Commissionerate has two to three traffic enforcement teams, led by an officer of the rank of Sub-Inspector and above, with a tab in hand for instant verification and payment,” says Deputy Commissioner A.V. Ranganath.

“For us, the enforcement of traffic rules is not new. The approach is visible policing on the roads and this time, we are confident that the new system will go down as a novelty,” he said.

Interestingly, on July 31, a day before the new penalty points system came into force, there were over 11,000 pending challans that were paid up by drivers/owners of vehicles for various offences. The daily average number till then was anywhere between 8,000 and 9,000, says the police officer, adding that this indicated a healthy trend.

Statistics also point out a perceptible decline in the number of fatal road accidents. Mr. Ranganath says this was due to an attitudinal change among road-users. “People are increasingly becoming conscious of following the basics of road discipline—wearing a helmet, sticking to the lanes and not over-speeding. This is not to say that everything is hunky dory, but suffice it to say that there is a change for the better,” he reiterates.