Visakhapatnam: Repeat traffic violators seem to having a field day in the city.With no proper mechanism in place to nab these repeat traffic violators in Visakhapatnam and other parts of Andhra Pradesh, police and Road Transport Authority (RTA) officials are at their wits end.Sources said that traffic police and RTA officials register the vehicle registration number, instead of the driving license number. Only in major accidents, especially those that include fatalities, officials take down the driving license number to produce it in the court.Speaking to TOI, additional deputy commissioner of police (traffic) M Ramesh Kumar said that they used to issue traffic challan to vehicle owners for various kinds of traffic rule violations such as signal jumping, speeding on the wrong way, parking at no-parking-zones, driving without valid documents. But, there is no easy automated mechanism in place to check the number of challans pending against a driver, he added. The petty fines for traffic violations do not deter youngsters, the police officer added.Police data on traffic violations reveal that a total 5.4 lakh traffic violations under various sections of MV Act (excluding drunken driving) were reported in Visakhapatnam city in 2018, while the number of traffic violations were 4.08 lakh in 2017. The city police had collected over Rs 11 crore in 2017 and Rs 15 crore in 2018 from motorists in terms of traffic fines.“Road safety continues to be a major concern in the city. Despite our awareness drives and road safety weeks, most of the youngsters lack respect for traffic rules. We have no proper mechanism to quickly pull out the names of repeat offenders and checking manually involves a tedious process, said member of road safety committee AH Khan. We have raised the issue with the higher-ups and we are hoping that a new software will be developed to redress this issue, he added.Sources also said that traffic police are equipped with smartphones, which are connected to the police server. But, the police cannot get the detail on a car number or a driving license number instantly. With their smartphones, cops can issue a traffic challan, but nothing more. If there is a software update, tracking violators will become easy, they added.

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