Armed with a new fleet of interceptors, the State Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) will further tighten the enforcement of road rules to rein in erring motorists.
State Transport Commissioner Anil Kant has asked the enforcement wing and regional transport officers to be firm on those jumping red light, overloading, driving without helmet and using mobile phones, speeding, and drink-driving, offences which he termed grave, and suspend their driving licences.
As many as 8,787 driving licences of motorists involved in the five offences were suspended in the January-July period, Mr. Kant said. From October 1, 2016 to May 25, 2017, driving licences of only 3,024 of the 1,62,623 motorists were suspended for offences in the five categories, a fact which came in for criticism of the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety headed by K.S. Radhakrishnan.
A meeting chaired by the Transport Commissioner at the Transport Commissionerate here reviewed the measures and discussed the steps to tighten the enforcement. The enforcers had been asked to follow the directive of the Supreme Court committee. They had been asked to confiscate vehicles without third party insurance and ensure that speed governors in the vehicles were of type approval.
For fatal accidents, the driver’s licence would be suspended for one year and for drunk driving the period would be six months. It would be three months for all the other listed offences.
Joint Transport Commissioner Rajeev Puthalath said suspension of driving licence had resulted in better road discipline and dip in the number of accidents.
The enforcers had also been asked to act against inter-State private luxury stage carriers who fleeced commuters, operators of parallel services, and those who used tobacco products, liquor, and drugs while driving.
The 17 interceptors are equipped with 180-degree wide angle DVR camera that can detect violations such as use of mobile phone and driving without seatbelt, without stopping the vehicle, the Joint Transport Commissioner said.
The MVD has commenced real-time monitoring of enforcement through SAFE developed by the Smart Support Group (SSG).