Pune edit: Laxity breeds contempt of law

More than 200 cases of drink-driving were registered in the city on the night of December 31, 2011. Compare this with the 113 drivers booked for similar offences on New Year’s eve in 2010.

Was it a case of better detection of drivers under the influence of alcohol? Or was the public taking for granted the lax implementation of the law?

What about the rest of the year? Is the police department equally alert to curbing such offences on the city’s roads every weekend, and during each festival? How many cases have led to convictions? What about repeat offenders? Apart from penalising offenders, how many bookings have resulted in suspension or cancellation of driving licences? What is the conviction rate in cases that resulted in death, or physical disability, or loss to property?

It must be remembered that drink-driving can flourish only if there is laxity in the implementation of road regulations; or if there is the benign influence of political and/or money power to bypass penalties and punishment. That drink-driving cannot be fully curbed is one truth; the other being the fact that increasingly more and more people, among them youngsters, are daring to defy the law.

While it goes without saying that prevention is better than cure, the promised inclusion of traffic education in school and college curricula in the state is yet to see the light of day. Frequent awareness drives undertaken by the departments concerned and various non-governmental organisations have also failed to give birth to a safety-conscious community of motorists and riders on the city’s roads. That should be reason enough for introspection by the law-enforcement agencies and motorists alike.