Hyderabad: With an aim to bring down road accidents involving tipsy drivers, which are reported after midnight, the Hyderabad city traffic police are now conducting checking between midnight and 3 a.m.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) G Sudheer Babu, said that following cases of road accidents in late night hours, the traffic police stations were directed to conduct frequent checking between 12 am and 3 am. Special teams are identifying the hot spots which have a history of road accidents particularly involving drunk drivers and conducting the checking.
“The special teams are headed by an inspector or a Sub-Inspector. All those caught are booked and produced before the court. The message is clear, the traffic police are vigilant round the clock and people should not be under impression that they can escape if they come out and drive after midnight,” said G Sudheer Babu.
The traffic police have identified several hot spots in the city where there is huge flow of drunk drivers due to presence of hotels, bars and pubs. “The entire exercise of drunk driving checking is video graphed so as to counter allegations by those persons who are caught. In certain cases, people have been caught misbehaving with the traffic police officials. We have managed to book them under appropriate cases at the local law and order police stations,” he said.
The Hyderabad traffic police caught 13,431 persons for driving in inebriated condition so far this year and 1317 persons were sent to jail and driving licenses of 243 persons suspended. Licenses of 53 persons were permanently cancelled by the road transport authority officials following the court orders. Total fine of Rs 3,21,39,060 imposed on persons who were booked for drunken driving.
Those caught have to attend counselling program at Traffic Training Institute at Goshamahal and Begumpet.