Authorities fail to book traffic violators

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Visakhapatnam: Though over-speeding of vehicles is a major cause for the number of road accidents and fatal deaths in and around Vizag, officials of the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) failed to apply brakes to the traffic violators citing non-friendly speed guns, which capture the image and register speed and they would not fetch much fines from the traffic violators in the over-speeding case even if they spend hours of time on the roads.
In an initiative to reduce the increasing number of accidents on the city roads, particularly beach road, National Highway-16 stretch and few other places in the city, RTA officials used the Speed Laser Guns (SLG), but now the officials are not seen on any roads in the city with SLG to nab the traffic violators.
As per the city traffic police and RTA norms, the permissible speed limit within the city is 40 to 50 kmph while on NH-16 on city outskirts the speed limit is 80 kmph. But many motorists are violating the norms and increasing the road-rage incidents.
Motor vehicle inspector M. Butchi Raju said that the existing SLGs are a failure in the city and they are not being used to take the photographs and register speed, as the images were not clear and they are unable to make the convictions based on it.
He said that the speed guns, which can spot over-speeding vehicle from a distance of nearly 30-40 mts only and the guns fail to capture the images during night. Hence they struggle to stop the vehicles on the spot to impose fines as the violators are easily escaping.
Sources said that the RTA officials are looking to better and faster speed laser guns with integrated high-resolution cameras as the existing SLGs are not at all useful in Vizag city, where the motorist cross the traffic norms leaving the pedestrians and other motorists to their fate.
Additional deputy commissioner of police (Traffic) V. Suresh Babu said that presently RTA officials are nabbing the traffic violators who are riding the vehicles crossing the speed limits and their role is to regulate the traffic as they are not equipped with SLGs. Rough and negligent driving by motorists top the chart of traffic violation as around 39,000 cases have registered against them in 2012.