Between January and October this year,Chandigarh has witnessed a 34-fold increase in the number of zebra crossing violations. Moreover,while lane change violations has witnessed a 10-fold jump when compared to the same period last year,offences like using mobile phones while driving,underage and drunk driving have also seen a substantial rise. In 2010,there were 1297 zebra crossing violations compared to the 44,744 cases registered till October,2011. Similarly,only 63 violators were fined for lane change in 2010,which has gone up to 663 this year. Drunk driving violations has seen nearly a three-fold increase to 3,431 from 1,121 in 2010. The traffic police caught 364 underage drivers in 2011,compared to 125 last year. Moreover,5,123 people were caught using mobile phones while driving this year. The figure for the same offence stood at 3,874 in 2010. Comparing the figures of total challans issued till October 15,2011,the total number of challans have also gone up. While the traffic department issued 1.23 lakh challans in 2010 (till October 15),over 1.56 lakh violators have been booked for various offences this year there is a jump of over 30,000 cases. The fact that 100 Close Circuit Television Cameras (CCTV) were installed at 20 traffic lights points across the city is seen as playing a major factor in the increase in the number of challans. Speaking to the Newsline,Deputy Superintendent of Police (Traffic) Vijay Kumar,said: The cameras have contributed to catching more Zebra crossing violators in their act. Drivers are usually not in a habit of following rules,therefore,this was done to discourage the people. We have also conducted several drives against drunk and underage driving with the sole purpose of reducing the number of fatal accidents and making the roads safer. But it is not only that the number of challans have increased for all such offences. Violations regarding overspeeding,red light jumping,wrong side turn and using non-ISI helmets have seen far less challans when compared to the previous years. While only 468 riders were caught using non-ISI helmets in 2011,5,538 were caught for this violation in 2010. The violations registered for overspeeding stood at 763 far less than the 2,174 caught during the same period last year. The figures of wrong side turn driving stood at 10,706 for 2011,while the same offence saw 15,741 violations last year.
