The Bengaluru traffic police have launched a pilot scheme to send SMS notices to vehicle owners for traffic rule violations. This is to reduce the financial and manpower costs of sending the hard copies of traffic challans by post or in person.
If the pilot becomes successful, the traffic police will soon stop issuing paper challans.
Vehicle owners (not the driver/rider per se) will receive the SMS within a few minutes of the offence being committed. The SMS will have a link that can be used to pay the requisite fine.
Proof of the traffic violation concerned will also be attached to the link.
Presently, the traffic police print out the traffic challan and send it to the vehicle owner’s address by post, in accordance with the provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act. On average, 20,000 contactless notices are issued across the city every day.
The cost of sending one notice, which includes paper, printing and postal charges, is Rs 4.5. In some cases, police personnel hand-deliver the traffic challans to the vehicle owners’ address if the postal notices go unserved or unresponded.
There are also a few cases of the notices not being served at all as the vehicle owner would have changed their place of living (address). The process is not only costly but also leads to wastage of manpower.
This is where SMS alerts could help, says the traffic police chief B R Ravikanthe Gowda.
Since vehicle owners must provide their phone numbers at the time of registration, the traffic police can retrieve their data from the Regional Transport Office (RTO). And each SMS notice will cost a mere 20 paise. It would save both time and money, Gowda said.
The SMS will be sent only to the vehicle owner, regardless of whether he/she was at the wheel or someone else at the time of the violation. Police hope the SMS alerts would force vehicle users to follow the traffic rules.
Until a few years ago, traffic police constables and head constables would manually enter the date, time, place, type of violation and vehicle registration number in the challan.
The process is now captured by the Field Traffic Violation Report (FTVR), a hand-held device.
Once the FTVR records details of the violation, the challan is printed out and sent by post or hand-delivered by police personnel.
Sample SMS
“Dear....this is Notice u/s 133 IMV ACT against reg no... You have committed traffic violation.... on Date:... time... pls pay the fine Rs... within 7 days to avoid legal action. For more details visit http://btp.gov.in Pay online via Karnataka MobileOne. OR PayTM. From Bengaluru City Traffic Police.”