CHENNAI: In an enforcement drive, the Greater Chennai Traffic Police across the city on Wednesday, more than 2,000 motorists were booked for various traffic offences.
Among them, 1,595 cases were for wrong-side driving. Apart from manual checks by traffic cops, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras were used to detect the violations.
On Wednesday, the cops had booked motorists for overspeeding and rash driving, according to an official release.
Despite booking close to one lakh motorists every year, accidents continue even along arterial roads such as GN Chetty Street, Anna Salai, Mount-Poonamallee Road and Jawaharlal Nehru Road.
There are less than two dozen ANPR cameras and 3,100 traffic cops for a city with six million vehicles. This indicates the urgent need to expand the police force for effective enforcement of traffic rules, said road safety advocate R Chandar.
Accepting this, a state road safety committee member said that if they were to act more strictly against overspeeding, they would have ended up booking at least 70-80% of two-wheelers and cars.
“More often than not, a speeding vehicle tries to evade the cops at the checking point. So, there is a need to deploy an additional workforce downstream. With police being a limited workforce, it is practically impossible to implement this at all checkposts. So, we are deploying the force effectively at strategic locations,” the member said.
