Fine plan, but won’t stop traffic offences

Bengaluru: The figure is quite staggering. Over the last three months, the city traffic police has penalised close to 40,000 traffic offenders, fining them nearly one crore. But you only need to go out on the roads to see that this has had no impact whatsoever as auto drivers continue to drive at breakneck speed, bikes zig zag through traffic, zipping through red lights and cars remain parked on pavements, caring nothing for the law. With around 50 lakh vehicles out on city roads, the police is clearly having a hard time monitoring them.

Traffic experts believe a bigger fine is the answer. While they have been demanding this for years, the Union government has only now become serious about it after newly inducted Union minister, Gopinath Munde, was killed in a road accident that saw a taxi jump a signal and hit his car on June 3. Two months later, the Centre is talking about about increasing the penalty for traffic violations and making it as heavy as in developed countries. It is also considering introducing a point system for traffic offenders, which could lead to cancellation of their licences.

Under this system, a drunken driving offence may earn the offender three points against his licence, jumping a traffic signal, two points, and subsequent offences, three more points. Once the offender crosses the maximum number of points, his licence could be revoked and he could even face a jail term of three to six months.

But traffic experts caution that unless the state governments ensure better traffic management, bring in reforms in RTOs, digitise licences, and correct addresses found in registration books, it will be difficult to impose higher fines or the new point system.

Most, however, agree the present fines for traffic offences are laughable. Even if a car driver leaves his vehicle in a no-parking zone he is fined a mere Rs 100, they point out. “Only when you increase the fine amount to Rs 5,000 will vehicle owners think twice before committing such an offence,” says a traffic officer.

“We need to impose higher fines for traffic violations,” agrees city Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), B. Dayanand. “No matter how many offenders we catch, commuters tend to break the rules the moment they don’t find a traffic cop on duty,”

he rues.

The fact that the Bengaluru police is having a hard time despite having a traffic department equipped with a database where every traffic violation is registered, triggered by handheld mobile sets given to enforcement officers, makes the challenge clearly huge. In fact its worse in a number of metros which still continue to issue challans to traffic offenders in the country.