CHENNAI: It’s not uncommon that eight categories of road-users — drivers sans seat belts or helmets, those over-speeding or using mobile phones while driving, jumping traffic signals, overloaded vehicles, passengers in goods vehicles and drunk drivers — top the chart for road rule violations.
But traffic planners and managers are bemused by the fact that the incidence of these violations remained high even during the lockdown, when fewer vehicles were plying on roads.
In pre-Covid 2019, 1.08 crore motorists were booked for committing these eight different traffic offences, which have been categorised as major offences by the Supreme Court panel on road safety. In 2020, however, this number rose to 1.72 crore, a spike of 59% vis-a-vis the previous year.
The situation has only worsened in 2021 as one crore people have already been booked across the state in the first six months for these violations. While Chennai police booked 15.9 lakh cases in 2020, they have booked more than 6.7 lakh cases so far in 2021. This surge indicates that the public continues to take traffic rules lightly and that there was stricter enforcement on roads during the lockdown.
Advocate VS Suresh Kumar said there is a need to educate people on the consequences of these violations and the hefty penalties.
Except for drunk-drive cases, the penalty amount is still less than ?1,000 for most traffic offences. Notably, Tamil Nadu is one of the few states that has not implemented amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act, which allow enforcement agencies to collect heavy penalties and take serious action against violations. The new Act proposed a fine of ?5,000-? 25,000 or three years imprisonment for such offences.
Suresh, however, agreed that enforcement has improved in the city compared to suburban areas. “People were cautious to wear masks, but threw all road safety rules to the wind,” he lamented.
Additional commissioner of police, Traffic, Pradip Kumar said that his team has pulled all strings to enforce road rules under the Motor Vehicles Act during the lockdown, resulting in more penalties. Another senior official said stricter enforcement of rules played an important role in bringing down the overall number of road accidents in the state, he said.
Official data corroborates this, as the number of fatal accidents in the state dipped from 10,500 in 2019 to 8,000 the next year -- a 24% drop. The state road safety cell attributed the dip in fatal accidents to stricter enforcement and modernisation of equipment. “Apart from installing more CCTV cameras, new technologies like bodyworn cameras and interceptors were procured to nab offenders,” said a member of this lead agency.
Transportation activists, however, allege that most of the equipment are not used effectively barring one or two prominent traffic points in the city such as Nandanam and Guindy.
