Straight-piped: The Great Indian Jugaad(gone wrong)
The Mumbai Pune Expressway has been a great beacon of hope, in the otherwise bleak story that is India's road safety. While the country saw a 4 per cent rise in deaths due to road accidents to an alarming 1.6 lakh, fatalities on this quite busy expressway dropped by a notable 26 per cent.
Now, I spend a lot of time driving on this road, and the interventions that have led to this are genuinely commendable and, if implemented on a wider scale across our country, should go a long way in improving this serious problem that we face.
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The trucks still hog as many lanes as they can, which is probably a problem that now needs some pointed interventions. But the much improved signages and lighting, more stringent patrolling, and most importantly, an army of speed cameras really do work to keep motorists safe.
The speeding fines especially are hefty. You can rack up a massive challan easily if you aren't keeping to the speed limits since each offence will set you back Rs 2000. But we love finding shortcuts to our problems, which in most instances is heartening, and a singular trait of our culture that we should never try to suppress. But in this instance, some restraint is in order.
That's because we have realized that the fine for speeding may be Rs 2000, but the fine for not having a numberplate altogether, or having one that massages your ego and conveniently can't be read by the cameras, is only Rs 500 in Maharashtra. So now, you will find a load of cars that run on this highway with their numberplates removed. More dangerously, a bunch of them exploit this loophole with rash manoeuvres and over-speeding.
This needs to be curtailed. With a load of AI already being incorporated into our surveillance systems, it shouldn't be difficult to fix this loophole. Needless to say, the fines too need to be revised to be even more stringent than the ones for over-speeding. But most importantly, more work needs to be done to educate road users that the cons far outweigh the pros of taking this loophole.
Until then, you as someone with a keen eye for all things cars can report these cars on the traffic apps. Or just go up to the cops that you find along this road and let them know. They are usually helpful and appreciate the effort.
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