Chennai: In Chennai, where the police take care of over 750 sq km area and more than 70 lakh people, motorists are visibly the most habitual offenders, according to last year’s traffic offence statistics available with this news paper.
Motorists in Chennai had paid a whopping amount as fine – nearly Rs 20 crore - for the traffic violations they had committed in 2013.
The traffic police had booked over 19 lakh cases against the violators in the whole year.
Till December 31, 2013, the police had collected Rs 19.87 crore from motorists and booked as many as 19.27 lakh cases against them.
Statistics for 2013 show that more number of motorists were caught violating traffic rules in the west zone of the city while people in the east zone were more committed to following traffic rules.
In the west zone, the police booked 6.28 lakh cases last year, while in the east, the number of cases booked stood at 2.63 lakh.
In the south zone, 4.62 lakh cases were booked while in the north, 5.73 cases were booked.
“It does not always mean that those in the west zone are violators. It may also be because the policemen were more active in the area,” an official noted.
The city police were keeping a strict vigil against drunken driving by booking at least 5,000 cases every month, thus registering three-fold increase in the number of cases booked.
Apart from drunken driving, the traffic police had been collecting fine through the e-chalan system, using their hand-held machines, from vehicle-oÂwÂners agaiÂnÂst signal violation, obstrÂucÂtÂing traffic, driving on no-enÂtry roads, parking violations, etc.
Next: Road fatality rate brought down
Road fatality rate brought down
Chennai: The city police on Wednesday noted that despite the death of five youths on Tuesday night after their bikes collided with other vehicles in different incidents, the total number of death due to road accidents has come down to 1,265 in 2013 from 1,445 in 2012.
The police attribute this reduction in fatal accidents on city roads to the crack down on drunken driving.
The city police had been booking at least 5,000 cases of drunken driving on an average every month.
However, on Tuesday night, the police booked only 32 cases of drunken driving, compared to 96 the previous night.
“We know that a good number of motorists, particularly the bike riders, were drunk. But the roads were busy on Tuesday night, it being eve of New Year, and we were not in a position to check and book all the vehicles. We did not wanted to dampen the festival spirit of the people. We were only warning the drunk drivers and arranging other vehicles with sober drivers for their transport.
We decided to book only those who were found heavily drunk. Despite our efforts, five youths died in road mishaps,” the police said.
The police had made elaborate arrangements to keep vigil on the road and also on the sands of the Marina and Elliots.
There was no case of drowning in the city beaches on Tuesday night.
Tight vigil was enforced on the beach to prevent revellers from venturing into the sea. There were beach buggies with flashing beacon lights.
