In a novel method to create awareness about road safety and traffic rules, the city police put up shamiana (marquees) at 22 checkpoints in the city, where traffic offenders were temporarily detained on the New Year's Day. Police personnel played popular Tamil songs at the venues and even distributed cakes to the offenders.
More than 1,000 police personnel were on duty on the night. About 30 cops and volunteers were deployed at each checkpoint set up at places such as Lakshmi Mills Junction, Codissia Road Junction, Chinthamani Junction, Race Course, ARC Junction on Mettupalayam Road and DB Road. They stopped motorists, who were not wearing helmets and asked them to wait under the shamiana. "We caught 350 motorists, who were not wearing helmets. A few of them were drunk. Groups of youth were caught for rash driving. All of them were kept under the shamiana, where a team from the Kasturba Gandhi Memorial De-addiction, Rehabilitation and Research Center in Coimbatore conducted awareness sessions on alcohol addiction," inspector of police (traffic -west) KV Sadhasivam told TOI.
Police neither registered cases nor collected fine from the offenders. After the awareness session, the offenders were let off around 1am on Monday. City police commissioner K Periaiah visited the DB Road checkpoint around 12.30am, where he cut a cake along with police personnel and the detained offenders.
