30% cut in drunk driving accidents: Mumbai Traffic Police

Mumbai: The relentless decade-long ‘fight drunk-driving’ campaign, launched by Mumbai traffic police in 2007, has finally inspired motorists to drive responsibly on city roads. The holistic approach of tenacious campaign from nakabandis to scariest anti-drunk driving billboards on arterial roads to advertisements on television and FM radios, grim reminder to potential drunk drivers through twitter messages, educating school and college children about road-accident fatalities due to drunk driving, etc have collectively reduced almost 30 percent in the fatal accidents due to driving drunk in the first nine months this year as compared to the corresponding period of 2016.

The Joint Commissioner of Mumbai Traffic Police Amitesh Kumar said, “Last year 399 fatal road accident cases due to drunk driving were reported during January-September. The data of fatal road accidents of the corresponding period in 2017 is only 289. We are still working on to reduce such accidents even more.”

In a bid to deter motorists to drive drunk, the Mumbai traffic police have been setting up surprise nakabandis all across city. The Deputy Commissioner of Police, Traffic (City), Ashok Dudhe said there is now fear factor among motorists to drive drunk on city roads.

“We have identified the spots where the drunk-driving cases were reported in huge numbers. Hence, we continued setting up nakabandis in those sensitive areas. To add the element of surprise, we have been changing the locations of nakabandis to catch drunk drivers. Our team of traffic police include women police constable to ensure that every driver, including female, is checked thoroughly with breathalyser,” added Dudhe.

The surprise nakabandis have reduced drunk driving cases, said Dudhe, adding, “Earlier we used to register two dozen drunk driving cases during weekend but now the motorists in the city are now aware that they will be caught by the police during surprise nakabandis in the city. Now we hardly register four cases on Friday or Saturday nights at police stations.”

Under the guidance of Dudhe, many motorists were either fined or arrested. “We have also cancelled the driving license of motorists who are caught behind the wheel in an inebriated state. This campaign has instilled fear factor among people to drive drunk. Now the motorists drink alcohol and prefer booking a radio taxi to reach home instead of driving drunk. Also, if someone has to go from South Mumbai to Borivali, they easily hire a driver online to take them to their destination with their vehicle,” added Dudhe.

The Traffic police in-charge of Dindoshi Division, S Katakdhond believes that the awareness level among motorists has gone up now in Mumbai. Teams of traffic police have been visiting various schools and colleges in the city to make them aware about traffic rules.

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“We made the students aware of use of seatbelt, helmet, consequences of driving drunk, etc. The school students discussed about the awareness programme with their parents. The awareness programme among school children helped us a lot to control drunk-driving cases. Also, during Metro work in the city we have made the people more aware,” Katakdhond told the Free Press Journal.

“Besides this we started ‘traffic guide programme’ which is being promoted by Joint Commissioner of Police (Mumbai Traffic) Amitesh Kumar. In the programme, we have made people aware, the driver should be 18-year-old and above, (s)he should give at least two hours during peak hours every week. These traffic guides are neither the police nor the traffic warden but the public. Our priority is to control the cases of drunk driving for which we took stern action against the violators. So, these are the few initiatives which helped us reducing the fatal accidents due to drunk driving,” added Katakdhond.

Mumbai traffic police also made truck drivers as well as auto-rickshaw drivers aware about the consequences of drunk-driving. “We also went to bus depots to spread awareness among Heavy Motor Vehicle (HMV) drivers,” he added.