Drunk driving a concern for Kolkata Traffic Police

Despite the initiatives taken by the Kolkata Traffic Police, the increasing trend of drunk driving has raised an alarm as 2022 recorded the highest prosecution for the offence since 2019.

Even though 2020 and 2021 witnessed lockdown and many restrictions owing to the Covid pandemic, the figure compared to 2019, was nearly the same. According to the annual review of Kolkata Traffic Police, in 2019, 8571 motorists were prosecuted for drunk driving. In 2020 and 2021, the figures were 2005 and 2513, respectively. A sharp rise was seen in 2022 with 26406 motorists caught and prosecuted.

The number of prosecutions for using mobile phones while driving also increased a bit. In 2019, 8941 motorists were prosecuted. The figure dropped to 3310 in 2020 but again rose to 6674 in 2021. In 2022, it jumped to 8633. Traffic police claimed that in several accident cases it was found that the motorists were busy talking on the phone which hampered their attention while driving.

The figure of prosecution for rash and negligent driving, along with overspeeding, has decreased slightly. In 2019, cops had prosecuted 93875 motorists for rash and negligent driving. The figure decreased to 46037 in 2022. Also, 615692 motorists were prosecuted for over speeding in 2019 which came down to 429854 in 2022.

However, the effort to bring down the numbers further to make the city accident-free as much as possible will continue as informed by the Commissioner of Police (CP), Kolkata Vineet Kumar Goyal.