VIJAYAWADA: Vijayawada police, it seems, are waking up to the problem - the heart-stopping thunderous sound of a high-end motorbike - that has been plaguing the law enforcers in major metros such as Bangalore or relatively smaller cities like Pune, for some time now.While the increasing cases of disturbances and noise pollution caused by customised high-end bikes even caught the attention of concerned Road Transport Authority (RTA) officials, the traffic police reportedly were gearing up to take severe action against the errant owners for flouting AP Motor Vehicle (MV) act norms.
“In the last one week, we identified as many as 20 motorcycles that flouted the established law and seized those. Only after replacing (the custom-made fittings in the bikes) with factory-made settings, we released the vehicles,” said Deputy Transport Commissioner (DTC) E Meeraprasad. He admitted that motor vehicles norms were getting increasingly flouted in Vijayawada with regard to alterations made to the high-end bikes and said, “those were in gross violation of Section 52 of the Motor Vehicles Act,1988 and Rule 120 of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules,1989”.
It may be recalled that the High Court had earlier directed the Transport Department and the State Police to initiate stringent action against persons who rode motor vehicles with customised modifications in violation of the Motor Vehicles Act.
The HC order and the following police action became all the more pertinent if one met the 50-year-old housewife P Rathna Kumari of Bhavanipuram, who was petrified by the thump of one such vehicle that crossed her at breakneck speed, as she was returning home at night. “The sudden popping sound from the bike, driven by a careless youngster, made me terror-stricken. Only after few seconds, I regained my consciousness and went home,” she said. However, the authority is determined to put an end to the problem.
What police in other places did
The Bangalore police, apart from imposing fines, reportedly made the erring riders watch their bike’s exhausts being broken away and then hammered out of shape. Pune traffic police imposed fines on erring riders.