Kathmandu, December 29

Traffic police have taken action against as many as 2,86,922 persons so far for driving under the influence since they launched the crackdown on drink-driving in Kathmandu valley on December 3, 2011.

Statistics released by Metropolitan Traffic Police Division said the DUI violators included 285,320 men and 1,602 females. According to MTPD, the special campaign has not only helped reduce road accidents likely to be caused by drink-driving, but has also led to a collection of more than Rs 286 million in revenue from the offenders. Traffic cops punish each offender of drink-driving with a fine of Rs 1,000.

The crackdown was launched in the wake of increasing number of road accidents associated with drink-driving in the valley. The existing law does not say anything about alcohol limit and thus the law enforcement agency has adopted zero tolerance policy towards drink-driving.

MTPD said speeding, drink-driving, carelessness of the drivers, passengers and pedestrians, overload and mechanical breakdown are the leading causes of road accidents.

As part of the crackdown on drink-driving, the MTPD has recommended the concerned transport management office to suspend licences of nearly 250 drivers after they were caught driving under the influence for the sixth time.

According to Section 60 of Motor Vehicle and Transport Management Act-1993, if a driver violates traffic rules more than five times, the authority may suspend the driving licence of such drivers in the sixth instance on the basis of number of punch holes in the licence.

Meanwhile, MTPD informed that it booked 185,436 drivers for violating various traffic rules in the first five months of the running fiscal 2018-19.

The common forms of traffic rule violations are disregard for traffic signals, overcharging passengers, use of mobile phone while driving, parking vehicles in the no-parking zone, seat belt infraction, mechanical modification of bikes, overload, overtaking from the left side of the road and violation of one-way traffic rule.

Drink driving tops the chart of offences with13,965, violation of lane discipline (13,803), parking on footpath (11,181) and overcharging passengers (4,136), among others. Bikers are mostly ignorant about traffic rules, show

the statistics.

The use of CCTVs, surveillance vehicles and go-pro cameras to catch offenders have also helped curb traffic rule violations, MTPD said.