Guwahatians Pay Over Rs 1 Lakh As Fines Everyday For Traffic Rules

GUWAHATI: Believe it or not. Residents of the State’s capital city have paid more than Rs 1 lakh everyday till November this year for violating traffic rules.

From January to November this year the Guwahati City traffic branch have managed to collect Rs 4.33 crore as fines for violation of traffic rules. Going by the total amount of fines in the last 11 months, it is estimated that the cops collected over Rs 35 lakh fines per month and nearly Rs 1.3 lakh everyday.

More than 30 per cent of penalties were levied on helmet-less driving. A huge amount of fines were collected from traffic signals violation, wrong-side parking, not wearing seat belts, use of mobile phones while driving, driving without licences and other legal documents and drunk driving. In majority of cases, traffic violators were caught in between 9 am and 6 pm. Collection of fines was more during the festival days.

A traffic police official told this reporter that collection of fines could have been more had the cops been able to catch all traffic violators. “Many traffic violators managed to flee. Sometimes we also do not impose fines on drivers who are found violating traffic unintentionally. We also try to create awareness among drivers on importance of following traffic rules for their own safety,” he said, adding increase in the number of vehicles on city roads has also resulted in rise in traffic violations.

Fine collection is likely to go up further in 2019 with the City Traffic is planning to introduce the e-challan system for traffic violations.The Automatic Number Plate Recognition System (ANPRS) will installed at traffic junctions. Under the system, notices will be sent to the vehicle owners’ homes for traffic violations such as jumping the traffic light, overriding the zebra crossing, not wearing seatbelts and helmets, etc.

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