JOIN USRs one lakh per hour: That's what police net as traffic fine in Bengaluru
Do you know how much fine the Bengaluru traffic police collect every hour on average? That’s close to Rs one lakh and roughly about Rs 20 lakh a day. Surprised? There’s more in store.
In the previous year, they received a windfall of Rs 70.44 crore by fining people for traffic violations. That’s the highest amount to have been collected as traffic fine in Bengaluru’s history and almost Rs five crore more than that collected (Rs 65.92 crore) in 2014.
So, what explains this accomplishment? The reasons are several.
M A Saleem, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), said that the police were acting tough on traffic violations in the last two years. They registered 40 per cent of the cases through the contact-less method.
This refers to the police flagging down violations through CCTV surveillance. It helped to achieve transparency, he pointed out.
Clamping down on jaywalkers also boosted police coffers. Besides, outsourcing towing away of vehicles parked at wrong place helped collect more fine. The private agency is paid Rs 100 for every vehicle towed.
Now that helmet has been made mandatory for pillion riders, the traffic police hope to collect Rs 100 crore as fine in the coming years.
The year 2015 also saw the police registering the highest number of traffic violations (76.26 lakh cases) ever. This figure is more than double that of 2010 (33.33 lakh cases).
The police registered 73.43 lakh cases in 2014 and 53.48 lakh cases in 2013.
(See table).
Most common violations
Wrong parking and riding without helmet were two of the most common traffic violations among 31 offences listed under the Motor Vehicles Act. These two accounted for 35 per cent of the total fine collected. In 2015, the police registered as many as 21 lakh cases of wrong parking and a little more than 17 lakh for riding without helmet.
The police also cracked down on use of mobile phone while driving/riding (2.7 lakh cases), no entry (5 lakh cases), footpath riding (80,468 cases), lane indiscipline (4.6 lakh cases) and drunk-driving (62,576). There was almost a threefold increase in wheeling cases (399) over 2014 (167) and drag racing cases (758) over 2014 (319).
On the brighter side, there were fewer road accidents in Bengaluru in 2015, though the decline was marginal. In the previous year, 740 people were killed in road accidents, down from 737 in 2014. The total number of accidents in 2015 stood at 4,828, down from 5,004 the year before.
Statistics show that road accidents are decreasing over the last few years. In 2010, there were 6,483 accidents and 858 people had lost their lives. Saleem attributed the decrease in road accidents to improved policing.