729 BOOKED FOR WRONG SIDE DRIVING IN A DAY
In a day, 729 drivers have been slapped with challans for wrong side driving on the city roads by the traffic police.
On Thursday morning, Hyderabad City Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar posted on his Twitter handle, “Many road accidents take place because of wrong side driving, help us to make Hyderabad roads safer for your family. Avoid wrong side driving. Yesterday traffic police caught 729 drivers driving on the wrong side. Let us join hands to develop culture of law abiding citizens in Hyderabad.”
For tens of thousands of road users in the city, taking an illegal turn in the middle of the road and then driving on the wrong side of the carriage way against the traffic flow, in effect taking a ‘shortcut’ to where they want to go on the other side of the road, has become a daily affair despite the possibility of being caught by the police for violating road rules. According to the traffic police, as many as 26,505 such violations – driving on the wrong side – have been recorded between January 1 and February 25 this year in the city. The Motor Vehicle Act lists driving on the wrong side under Section
119/177 of the Act. The offence, according to the Hyderabad Traffic Police, attracts a fine of
`1,100 for every such violation. Driving on the wrong side of the road is dangerous to those indulging in this act. They also put safety of those following traffic rules and driving on the ‘right side’ of the road at risk, a traffic police official said.
In 2018, the number of people caught driving on the wrong side was 1,27,955, a figure that shot up the next year. These apparent acts of brazen violations of traffic rules witnessed a significant jump in 2019 with the police registering as many as 2,07,379 such cases that year. “We keep conducting traffic awareness programmes but the number of violators only seems to be growing,” an official said. Last year, the city witnessed 271 fatalities in road accidents of various types from among 2,493 people who were injured in the accidents. Twowheelers topped the type of vehicles involved in accidents at 951, followed by cars at 817 and three-wheelers at 237, according to the traffic police data. While seven people died while driving on the wrong side of the road in the city in
2018, the number came down to five in 2019.
While cases of people driving on the wrong side are common across the city, it is particularly high in some locations, such as near Gandhi Bhavan in Nampally, Sultan Bazar, Afzalgunj, Old MLA Quarters, Kachiguda, and Abids. “We see a large number of two and three-wheelers taking a wrong turn to drive against the traffic flow,” a traffic police official said. “The common response we get from those we catch, is that the road dividers run for too long and they prefer to take a quick turn to get to where they want, even if it means violating the rules,” the official added.