974 drink-driving cases on Sat, cops to check vehicles on weekdays too

After booking almost 1,000 people for drink-driving (DD) on Saturday night, the City traffic police have asserted that the drive against the offence would continue. They will now check vehicles on the weekdays too.

Launched a month ago, the drive against drink-driving mainly entails checking vehicles mainly on Friday and Saturday nights. It has, however, done little to reduce the number of drink-driving cases. On Saturday, from 9 pm to 2 am, police checked as many as 13,677 vehicles at 126 junctions across the City, and caught 974 people involved in drink-driving.

Motorcyclists formed the largest group of offenders and as many as 713 DD cases have been registered against them. Next came car drivers (162), autorickshaw drivers (50), lorry drivers (21), tempo drivers (15) and cab drivers (12). A bus driver was also caught drink-driving. Two alleged offenders were women. The highest number of cases (64) was reported in Peenya, police said.

Police have not only confiscated the offenders’ documents but also recommended to the transport department that their licences be impounded.

“We consider it as a major challenge as road safety is our top priority,” Additional Commissioner of Police (traffic and security) B Dayananda said. “We will continue to check vehicles rigorously.”

Dayananda, however, refused to concede that the drive against drink-driving had not yielded the desired results. “It is not failure on our part. Awareness campaigns and checking of vehicles for drink-driving should go hand in hand. The number of cases has not come down but we are confident that our efforts will bear fruit in the coming says,” he said.

‘Strict action will check DD’

Another senior officer said stringent action such as registering cases and recommending cancellation of offenders’ driving licences to Regional Transport Authority would surely bring results.

A week ago, police wrote a letter to the RTA, recommending suspension of driving licenses of as many as 954 people caught drink-driving.