The city traffic police are making efforts to trace rule violators in nearly 2,000 cases in which traffic challans sent by post have come back with acknowledgement as “addressee not found” in the last two months.
“We are sorting out these cases. By using technology, we are tracing out these offenders and making them pay the fine,” said Assistant Commissioner of Police (Traffic) M.A. Natraj. In the last one year, the city traffic police have traced nearly 12,000 such violators, he added.
In addition to manual booking of cases, the traffic police are going through images of CCTV cameras at the traffic automation centre and registering traffic offences. Mr. Nataraj said since the last three months, the traffic police personnel at the centre have been going through footage of CCTV cameras installed at 15 important places. Traffic police posted at different traffic junctions are also noting down vehicle numbers of the offenders and booking cases.
Using the vehicle information provided by the State Transport Department, traffic challans are sent to these offenders by post. All these offenders are from the State, who reside in the city. In the absence of integration of the systems of State and the Central Transport Departments, the city traffic police are not sending traffic challans by post to vehicles registered in Kerala and other States. Fines related to such vehicles are collected on the spot.
One among ways to trace the address, Mr. Nataraj said include use of apps that help to find out the actual postal address of offender. “If we do not succeed in tracing the offender, the record of such vehicles remain in our database. Whenever such vehicles come on the road, fine is collected on the spot by officers who are checking vehicles.” Mr. Nataraj said vehicles are being checked regularly at different points in the city everyday.
Of the fine that is collected included ₹40,000 recently paid by a resident of Thokkottu, whose car was stopped by traffic police as it had tint on the side glasses and rear windshield. It was then found he was booked for other offences for which the fine had not been paid, Mr. Nataraj said.
The total fine collection by the traffic police last year was ₹5.86 crore.
