It looks like Indian government¡¯s plan to hike the penalties associated with traffic rule violations has worked wonders. After only a month of the implementation of revised traffic fines, national capital Delhi has reported a commendable decline in the recorded traffic violations, as high as 66 percent.
A new report by PTI mentions the figures for the month of September. The 66 percent drop in traffic rule violations is in comparison with September last year. The entire credit for this can be given to the new Motor Vehicle Act put in place starting September 1 this year.
Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, 2019 was passed in the parliament back in July. The government, however, had awarded time to the concerned authorities to ensure a proper implementation of the rules without any considerable discomfort to the road users in India.
With the new traffic rules and their associated penalties, reports of exorbitant traffic challans were flooded on the internet, with challan amounts even reaching up to lakhs in some cases. The cumulative effect, however, was a massive reduction in the number of challans on the roads, as commuters became increasingly aware of the traffic rules and how to follow them.
As per the PTI report, a senior Delhi police officer mentions these numbers, "In September 2018, a total of 5,24,819 challans were issued, while in September 2019, 1,73,921 challans have been issued against different violations of traffic rules."
(Representative Image: BCCL)
The numbers behind it
The data released by Delhi Police dives deeper into the challans of September this year and the same month in 2018. As per the date, 13,281 challans were issued for over-speeding in September 2018, which are now down to 3,366. Similarly, 15,261 challans for triple riding have been reduced to 1,853 in 2019 and 1,04,522 challans for riding without helmet in 2018 are down to 21,154 in 2019.
There were 3,682 challans for drunken driving in September 2018. The same number was recorded to be 1,475 in September 2019, just as 40,065 challans for not using seat belt were reduced to 6,445.
The downward trend was not common across violations though. Some of the traffic infractions displayed a rise in the number of challans too. Drivers caught without a license, for instance, were up from 5,120 last year to 11,529 in September this year. Similarly, those caught without pollution certificates were up to 13,659 in 2019 as compared to 3,279 in 2018.
(Representative Image: BCCL)
What went right?
A simple reason behind the crashing number of challans on Delhi roads is the massive penalties now associated with breaking traffic rules. While the fine amounts have been increased almost five times for all the traffic violations, new penalties have been imposed too, including jail time, impounding of vehicle and cancellation of driving license upon repeated violations.?
This, coupled with the fact that these cases of violations are mostly forwarded to the court as the police does not have the compounding power so far. This means defaulters caught violating the traffic rules will have to appear in court for most of the cases and cannot get away with it by simply paying the challan amount.?