BENGALURU: It’s been a year since the Bengaluru Traffic Police sent a proposal to hike fines for traffic violations and finally on Thursday, the state government approved and notified the revised fines. While the new fines have attracted some criticism for being to high according to some road users, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), P Harishekaran stoutly defended these fines and said that these fines would ensure motorists become responsible road users.
“We have not hiked fines to take money from the public but to regulate traffic movement and ensure the safety of people. This is to make sure people do not meet with accidents because of speeding and are responsible road users,” he said at a press conference on Friday.
“While the new rules are already in effect, we are updating the software on our PDA (personal digital assistant) machines which will take two days. Of the 38 violations sent for the proposed hike, these have been put into effect so far,” he said further adding, “I have instructed all our divisions to create awareness among the public about the revised penalty and also meet Uber, Ola drivers to educate them.”
He said that he has discussed the issue of wrong parking violations caused by Bounce Bikes, with the Urban Development Department and Namma Metro as they have given them permission to provide last mile connectivity services. When asked about the possibility of increased bribe amounts taken by cops on the road, owing to the hiked penalties, he said,”90 to 95 per cent of violations are recorded by 1000 cameras we have installed over the city, which directly sends vehicle details to the traffic management centre. We, in turn, send them the fine receipt to their registered address. We will be getting 6000 to 7000 cameras in a year.”
He said that BBMP has not yet responded to his proposal of creating parking spaces in existing government land which is lying unused. BTP registered 1 lakh speeding cases in 2017, 83,000 in 2018 and 23,154 in 2019 so far. The fine for the same has been hiked from Rs 300 to Rs 500 for private vehicle owners and Rs 1000 for drivers.