Daily Times

The City Traffic Police (CTP) would take stern action against pillion riders on motorcyclists for not wearing helmets and the traffic wardens have also started issuing warnings to citizens in this regard on Tuesday.

Following rules and directive, a majority of citizens have started wearing helmets across the city with the ratio reaching a record level of 80 percent.

The traffic police authorities are now planning to ensure the increase in ratio and meet the standards of developed countries in this regard as not wearing a helmet is considered a main cause of death and serious injuries in case of road accidents. The authorities are also working on the idea of eliminating every violation, which jeopardises the safety of citizens one by one.

Chief Traffic Officer (CTO) Liaquat Ali Malik said that CTP issued fined tickets to 335,408 violators and around 42,832 only on The Mall for not wearing a helmet in the last two months. He added that traffic police continued awareness campaigns about wearing helmets, saying violators would be dealt with iron hands from Saturday.

Meanwhile, citizens expect the prices of helmets to increase due to the move and also owing to lack of proper check on these vendors. They said that the concerned department failed to control the price hike in the markets which created more burden on the people who also suffered seriously due to price hike issues like electricity, gas, other utility bills and groceries, etc.

Sources said that a number of accidents involving motorcyclists happened in the city and the majority of deaths occurred due to injuries on the head. They said CTP had started different campaigns for the safety of the people and it would conduct lectures to create public awareness about wearing a helmet.

Sources said no motorcycle company provided helmets to the buyers at the time of purchase and now thousands of motorcyclists would have to buy helmets at inflated prices. They said that government and other concerned departments must plan to bound the motorcycles companies that they should provide helmets to the buyers on the sale of a new bike.

The CTO said traffic police had also started an awareness campaign about different traffic rules and ‘safe driving’ and how drivers can by following traffic rules can save their own and others lives. He said that traffic on city roads was increasing day-by-day due to population explosion and many people died and several were injured daily in road misshapes only because of lack of knowledge about traffic laws, especially the youngsters riding motorcycles, did not care about the rules and regulations.

Published in Daily Times, November 28^th 2018.