Visakhapatnam: Henceforth, mixing driving and drinking may cost you your driving licence in Vizag. The city traffic police have decided to prepare a database of drunken motorists repeatedly caught for it and recommend to the Road Transport Authority (RTA) to suspend their driving licences. The decision has been taken as Vizag has gained the dubious distinction of registering the maximum number of drunken driving cases in Andhra Pradesh in the last few years.
The cops also felt that drunken driving was the main cause for road accidents in the city. As many as 355 people, including 132 pedestrians, died and 1,342 were injured in 2015 and around 25 per cent of accidents were due to drunken driving. ADCP (Traffic) K.M. Patrudu city traffic police have registered over 18,000 drunken driving cases in 2015 and the offenders were also made to pay Rs 1.3 crore in the form of fine. However, this did not reduce the traffic violations in 2016. The process of identifying repeated drunken drivers has begun again with latest equipment and the data will be uploaded to our website, he said.
"There is a provision in the Motor Vehicle Act, 1988 and that allows for temporary suspension of licences of the repeated violators. We will recommend the transport department to cancel licences of violators to bring down the number of cases in Vizag to mitigate the road mishaps," Mr Patrudu added.
In 2015, not a single motorist was awarded imprisonment for drunken driving. This might be one of the reasons for the increasing number of drunken driving cases. The MV Act says any motorist driving under the influence of alcohol is a punishable offence and that motorists with alcohol content exceeding 30 mg per 100 ml of blood will invoke punishment. The first offence could result in fine or jail term and subsequent offences may lead to cancellation of driving licence.
