- Honest Officer
- 13 years ago
- 1929 views
Peshkaar took money
At CST in mumbai, approaching from JJ flyover towards CST main, one comes across 3 signal lights. At 6AM in the morning, the first one (biggest) was working but no one was following the lights. Next one is a left turn which was for pedestrian crossing, again the signal light was working and this is the one I broke. The third one was not working at the time.
This policeman was standing near the left turn and stopped me and took my licence. I offered to pay the fine, but he said he can not take the fine and i have to come to the police station. I told him, that will take too much of my time and made the following points.
# There were BEST buses also coming along and breaking the signal, which he said would be difficult for him to fine. I said that was unfair.
# I told him, it is difficult to know when to follow a signal and when not to, because some of them are working and some of them are not and at 6AM the traffic is so light that one does not budget that much time from home so as to follow all signals at such an early hour (had to drop somebody to the train station).
# I said at 6AM in the morning, the control room should change lights more often than during busy hours as it is plain inconvenience to stand there for 60seconds with not a soul in sight!
# I also told him that when traffic snarls happen, policemen are not to be found. He agreed and mentioned that they were overworked
# I mentioned to him that it feels unfair that for a traffic violation, i have to pay but still suffer potholes and inconvenience on road. He said that it was the responsibility of the BMC and he acknowledged my "disgust" but said he can not do anything about it.
Net Net, he let me go because, well basically i told him that the system was unfair and even when i want to pay the fine, i have to go through more inconvenience.
My suggestions
# if the police does want the traffic to follow signal lights at non peak hours, please ensure that the lights change often.
# please give the cop the power to charge a fine, else one needs to bribe the cop to get his licence back. The system encourages corruption.
# If the purpose is safety, then instead of the policeman manning a low key pedestrian crossing violations, he should have been at the big signal and ensure compliance of the traffic lights.