The Greater Chennai Traffic Police announced on Tuesday, April 18, that they had collected Rs 4.4 crore in fines from traffic violators in the last three months. The announcement came six months after the Tamil Nadu government significantly increased penalties for various traffic violations such as overspeeding, using the phone while driving, driving without a seatbelt etc. In October last year, the fine for speeding (in the first offence) was increased from Rs 400 to Rs 1000. However, commuters in Chennai complain that there aren’t enough speed limit signs on the city roads to help avoid these hefty fines.
Speaking to TNM, one such commuter said, “I was asked to pay a fine of Rs 1,000 for speeding, but there were no sign boards to indicate the speed limit on that road in Anna Nagar.” Reacting to such complaints, Chennai’s Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Kapil Kumar C Saratkar told TNM, “It is not feasible for us to put up boards on every road in the city. We expect people to know that the speed limit is 40 kmph and 50 kmph for all vehicles during the day and night respectively.”
Madhan, a commuter with similar complaints over the fines, admitted that he was not aware of the standing speed limits in the city. “The speed limit should be around 40 to 50 kmph I guess, but I’m not sure,” said Ramachandran, a Chennai resident who was recently fined for speeding on the East Coast Road.
Jayaram Venkatesan, Convener of the NGO Arappor Iyakkam, criticised the traffic police for expecting the public to know about the existing speed limits. “The officials have not conducted extensive awareness campaigns or communicated these speed limits through advertisements,” he said. Jayaram also urged the Chennai traffic police to first place sign boards or undertake awareness campaigns and then charge fines for speeding. “If there are no speed limit signs on some roads, it’s an indication that there is no speed limit for that road. If the traffic police are charging fines on such roads then it is a violation on their part,” he alleged.
ACP (Traffic) Kapil Kumar mentioned that the Greater Chennai Traffic Police have installed six new digital speed display boards at various locations, to create awareness among motorists. These digital display boards indicate whether a motorist is driving over the speed limit, but do not generate e-challans.
Explaining the various measures taken to ensure that overspeeding offenders are fined, the ACP (Traffic) mentioned that violators are nabbed not just with the help of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras, but also by using other equipment as “elements of surprise.” “Our department uses equipment such as speed radar guns to catch people who go over the speed limit, and we are going to soon incorporate interceptor vehicles in areas without ANPR cameras. This is because people are adhering to the traffic rules only when they see cameras. We want to catch violators by surprise and impose a fine,” Kapil Kumar said. While an average of 7,000 offences are recorded daily, the fines collected by traffic police have gone up by nearly 2.5 times after the hike in penalties six months ago.
Around 10 call centres have been set up in the city to remind offenders to pay their fines. “Paytm has also partnered with us for facilitating online payments. Hence, they have our offenders’ data and they also send reminders to Paytm users urging them to settle their penalties,” Kapil Kumar added.
The Chennai traffic police also conducted a special drive with surprise checks between April 9 and 15, to focus on drunken driving offenders. At the end of the drive, fines worth Rs 69.4 lakh were collected. A cumulative amount of Rs 9.6 crore has been collected in fines between 2020 and 2023 in Chennai for drunken driving cases alone.