Over 330 motorists booked for drunken driving on New Year

MUMBAI: Despite a six-month campaign against drunken driving, traffic police booked a record number of 338 motorists, all of them New Year revellers, on a single night.
    
"We were hopeful that people will be more careful after the drive but we continued witnessing events like the Marine Drive accident", a senior traffic police officer said.
    
The traffic police booked 338 motorists for drunken driving from 25 different places in the city till wee hours on Tuesday. Besides this, they also booked 46 motorists for rash driving and 45 more for speeding.
    
"This surpasses our previous record of booking 234 persons on a single night," the officer said.
    
A local court today sentenced 34 of the offenders booked for drunken driving to simple imprisonment term ranging from one to three days while one more was sentenced for rash driving.
    
Taking a cue from similar drives in other states, the traffic branch here had started a drive in June last against drunken drivers and has so far booked over 12,000 motorists. Over 2,500 of them have been sentenced by courts for jail terms and fine exceeding Rs two crore has been levied.
    
A lot of firsts like motorists getting imprisoned for driving while talking on their mobile phones, one month jail term for drunken driving and levying of Re one as fine, among others too are highlights of this drive.