Chennai: Traffic offenders are on the road, when they shoudn’t be

CHENNAI: Traffic offenders should be off the roads as per the rulebook, but a lot of them are not. Chennai traffic police want 5,500 motorists, who have committed serious traffic offences such as drunk driving or using phones while on bikes more than twice, punished by permanently banning them from using roads.
But these offenders remain scot-free due to the state transport department’s indifferent attitude.The Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety in 2015 categorised six traffic offences -- overspeeding, signal jumping, using cell phones while driving, overloading, drunken driving (DD) and carrying persons in goods vehicles -- as serious violations.

To reduce accidents, the panel asked states to cancel driving licences (DLs) of repeat offenders. Tamil Nadu, which tops the country’s accident chart, in the next three years cancelled thousands of DLs. But the cancellations started to decline in recent years due to litigations, and has come to a halt now.
City police this year (till October 20) identified 5,500 repeat offenders, who could be a threat for road safety if let free. But all of them continue to drive on city roads. “Our role ends with recommending cancellations. It is up to the RTOs to act on it swiftly,” said J Rajendran, joint commissioner (south), Greater Chennai Traffic Police (GCTP).
Transport department authorities said only courts can disqualify drivers and they have continued to suspend DLs temporarily for three to six months. Before suspending, Regional Transport Officers (RTOs) send a show-cause notice and have to await a reply from violators. “Given the manpower shortage, it takes months to suspend licences these days.
So, we take DD and IPC 304A (death due to negligence) on priority and have suspended close to 1,000 licences this year,” said a transport official. While city police claimed that hand-held devices provided to them mostly don’t reflect the status of DLs (whether it is active/suspended or cancelled), RTOs argued that all DLs are linked to central government’s Sarathy portal and hence cops can easily distinguish active DLs from others.
K Kathirmathiyon, a transport activist, said that there is no doubt that such violators should be dealt with strictly, but RTOs are going soft on them when it comes to commercial drivers (cabs, trucks, or buses). “Traffic police can put an end to this menace only if they start cancelling licences of repeat offenders,” he said.