Chennai Traffic Police to rationalise speed limit for vehicles after 20 years

GCTP revises speed limits; holds meeting with stakeholders, experts, citizen action groups, RTOs & traffic police. Commissioner inaugurates traffic awareness programme; distributes helmets & certificates to schoolchildren. Deaths due to road accidents reduced to 508 from 573 last year; officers instructed not to allow overloading vehicles & to impose fines for repeated violations. No fixed target for traffic police to book cases.

The Greater Chennai Traffic Police (GCTP) has decided to revise the speed limits for vehicles. The speed limits were set in 2003.

After installing speed guns at 10 locations across the city last month, the police said if vehicles exceeded speed limit of 40 kmph., the owners would be issued challan instantly. However, the decision was kept in abeyance as it drew criticism and the police said the speed guns would be used only for research purposes.

A committee headed by Kapilkumar C. Saratkar, Additional Commissioner of Police, Traffic, held its first meeting on Tuesday. Mr. Kapilkumar said the Commissioner of Greater Chennai Police had formed the committee to decide about revising the speed limits for vehicles. A meeting was held with all stakeholders along with experts from Anna University and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M), members of citizen action groups, regional transport officers and traffic police officers.

“We have studied the practice in other big cities in the country on speed limits. We discussed rationalising the speed limit in the city and will communicate our decision to the government. After getting necessary approval, we will implement it,” he said.

Earlier, as part of a strategy to reduce the accident rate, Commissioner Sandeep Rai Rathore inaugurated special traffic awareness programme on Tuesday at E.V.R. Salai and E.V.K. Sampath Salai junction in coordination with Traffic Wardens.

Mr. Rathore joined them in the campaign to create awareness and distributed helmets to two-wheeler riders. The recipients signed an undertaking to wear helmets while riding. Then the Commissioner addressed the road users at the junction on the need to follow traffic rules to avert accidents and distributed certificates to schoolchildren in appreciation of their role in creating traffic awareness.

About 120 schoolchildren, who are trained in safety, sensitised the motorists at the junction during stop signal on wearing helmet, using seat belt, avoiding cell phone while driving and obeying stop line by way of an enactment and displaying placards.