Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The violation of important traffic rules are being overlooked or our society has become more civilised than the developed countries because the Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) did not impose even a single penalty last year on at least half of its rules mentioned in Motor Vehicle Ordinance 1965.

In 2017, a total of 156494 challans were issued to the citizens on the violations of 32 out of 71 traffic rules, but most of them were restricted to driving without helmet, not fastening seat belt, using mobile phone while driving, signal light violations, route violations, fancy number plates and overloading.

However, while comparing tickets issued during last one year and the list of rules mentioned on the official website of the Islamabad Traffic Police, it is quite clear that a number of important violations of traffic rules are being ignored or the same were not happened.

The traffic police did not issue any ticket on the driving under the influence of drug or alcohol, which means that no drunk man was on the roads of capital city in whole year whereas all the vehicles in Islamabad are fully fit to drive as no ticket was issued on driving a car without a fitness certificate.

Currently, a massive campaign is underway on print and electronic media to create public awareness for giving the way to emergency vehicle but after reviewing the ITP’s data, people can say that there is no need of such advertisements because Islamabad Police could not find even a single car driver obstructing the movement of emergency vehicles in 2017. Those who use public transport in routine will also be surprised to know that no public service vehicle was found overloaded with passengers more than its allowed capacity.

On the other side, it may be a news for citizens that nobody blown horns in ‘silence zone’ like around the hospitals in last one year whereas all the vehicles are on road with full insurance coverage because the Islamabad traffic police did not find any car running without insurance.

“Most of the traffic police personnel are not fully aware with these traffic rules so how they can fine on violations which they even don’t know”, an insider of ITP told the Daily Times who added: “They fined only on routine violations and ignore rest of the rules.”

The other major violations which were ignored includes failing to observe lightening hours, failure to yield right of way to pedestrian, driving at night without proper lights, driving a transport vehicle without or with defective speedometer, failing to stop when required by traffic police and many others.

The Senior Superintendent of Islamabad Traffic Police, Malik Matloob while responding on the issue has accepted that the traffic police at present is unable to impose fine on aforementioned violations of rules due to some technical reasons. He however briefed that the safe city project is expected to be completed soon and after that the Islamabad Police would be able to catch such violations.

“Our priority is to maintain the flow of traffic and our officers usually impose fine on those violations, which halt the traffic flow,” he said.

Published in Daily Times, January 3^rd 2018.