Alarmed at the rising number of lane traffic violations in the district, the Motor Vehicles Department has begun tracking down such violators.
As an initial step, MVD officials caught 20 heavy vehicles which failed to keep the lane traffic rules along the Angamaly-Karakutty National Highway.
Joint RTO Sadik Ali said that most of the violations are committed because the vehicle users do not keep to the left of the road.
“As per the rules, all vehicles moving through four-lane roads should keep left. The right side is supposed to be used by over-taking vehicles. However, even now there are many vehicles which don’t keep to the left side of the road, making it accident prone,” he said.
“Also, people take it for granted that the right side of the road can be used for over-speeding. We plan to conduct awareness classes for the same. Currently, only heavy vehicles will be fined,” he said.
Fine up to `500-`1000 will be extracted from the violaters. In the past, steps to regulate lane traffic were initiated. However, due to the paucity of staff, it was not brought into effect much. “However, we now plan to rein in on these violators,” MVD officials said.
Meanwhile, the MVD has also taken steps to make paper work transactions between police and MVD officials more faster by making the transactions through e-mail. “Till recently, whenever an accident takes place, the details are collected by the traffic police from the accident spot. Then the police official would have to take the entire record of the accident and sumbit it to the MVD for further processing by hand. It was time-consuming and was causing unnecessary hassles,” Saadik Ali said.
Lack of police personnel is another reason why the officials were contemplating to transfer data through e-mail. “We are sure this is the best alternative for the entire procedure. However, initially, the details will only be transferred by email till 2 pm,” he said.