Did motorists in Benglauru suddenly turn over a new leaf in 2018?
A superficial glance at the number of violations booked by the city traffic police from January 1 to September 30 last year lends credence to this ‘miracle’ as only 15,253 licences were confiscated during that period. That’s an average of 1,695 a month.
The number was 37,528 the previous year, an average of 3,127 a month.
Unfortunately, the reason is not a new-found respect for lane discipline among motorists as much as it was that the traffic police were unable to conduct special drives during the period. The reason? They were busy with Assembly elections, and booking cases against motorists, who broke road rules, took a back seat.
“A majority of traffic police personnel were busy before and after elections. They were working over 15 hours a day on election-related duties and hence conducting drives and booking cases have taken a dip,” a senior police officer said.
K.V. Jagadish, DCP (Traffic East Division), admitted that the number of cases booked was relatively lower. “The 15,000-odd licences confiscated were sent to the transport department with a recommendation for cancellation. In 2017, the police booked traffic violators for various offences and seized 37,528 DLs,” said a senior traffic official.
Though the data for the licences collected from offenders from October 1 to December 31, 2018, is not available, officers said it’s unlikely that the figures would cross that of 2017.
The police have recommended that licences be suspended from anywhere between two month to six months depending on the nature of the offence.
Offences for which licences were confiscated included drink driving, rash and negligent driving endangering the lives of other motorists (drag racing , wheeling and riding on one way) , repeat offenders and motorists involved in fatal accidents and booked under Section 304a and Section 338 of the Indian penal code, Mr. Jagadish added.
