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Beware, drunk drivers! While people are in a festive mood, celebrating the X'Mas-New year, traffic police are out against drunken driving in Ranchi,capital city of Jharkhand. The drive was launched today to prevent road accidents.

www.jharkhandstatenews.com spotted the traffic police personnel near pubs, bars, drinking joints and liquor selling joints across the city.

Everybody knows that the cases of drunken driving increase during X'Mas and arrival of the New Year. This results in an increase of road accidents as well as molestation and rape of women during this festive season.

As such, the policemen were deployed at such places where there are possibilities of drunk driving. This drive against drunken driving is slated to continue till January end as the entire month will be bustling with festivities and picnics, says the police.

As per the norms, the fine for drunken driving can vary from Rs. 500 to Rs. 5000. However, to ensure that the offence is not repeated, the police will prosecute the person on spot instead of fining them. “If a person is caught drunk driving their driving license would be suspended for a period of three months, on the spot,” said Ranchi City SP Dungdung.

The guidelines of a road safety committee of Supreme Court formed in 2015 have identified four such traffic offences where the driving license of a person can be suspended for three months. These offences include drunk driving, rash driving, talking on the phone while driving and not wearing seatbelts.

Dungdung said, “If the person is caught for committing a second offence, their license would be suspended for six months and in the third offence the license would be revoked. Once the DL is revoked, the person cannot get a DL made again, anywhere across the country.”

Advocating the need of The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill which has been passed in the Lok Sabha and has to be tabled at the Rajya Sabha, Dungung said, “The new bill calls for tripling the quantum of fine and immediate revocation of DL. This would help reduce cases of drunk driving.”

With 40 alcohol metres and 50,100 disposable alcohol metre pipes, the traffic department plans to ensure that drunk driving does not cause any accident or inconvenience to the commuters.

Drunken driving has been a major cause of accidents across the state over the years. The data of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways show that there has been an increase of over 30% in cases of accidents caused by the influence of alcohol in 2017, as compared to 2016.

In 2016, as many as 543 road accidents occurred due to drunk driving in which 408 persons died while in 2017, the number of road accidents due to drunk driving increased to 801 in which 430 persons were killed and 396 grievously injured.

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