17K cases in 1 week: Bengaluru traffic cops crack down on e-commerce delivery agents

Bengaluru: Cracking down on e-commerce delivery agents, Bengaluru traffic police have registered a whopping 17,218 cases in the past week for various traffic violations, including wrong-side driving, not wearing helmets, and jumping signals.

On November 9, 2,670 cases were registered against delivery personnel across the city, an overwhelming chunk of the cases being for riding without a helmet (781), pillion riders not wearing helmets (643), and riding on roads marked as no-entry (404). Police collected Rs 13.78 lakh in fines.

On November 11, 5,979 cases were registered, enabling the police to collect Rs 30.57 lakh in spot fines. A majority of the cases were against pillion riders not wearing helmets (2,304), parking in no parking zones (1,260), and no entry (671). The next day, an additional 4,276 cases were registered with the same three violations being the highest. 

On November 15, 4,293 cases were registered, and the police collected Rs 22.13 lakh.

Police are coming down hard against these violations mainly because of the threats they pose to the safety of all road users, including themselves. Officers noted that delivery agents working for food aggregators and quick-service platforms face pressures of delivering within often unreasonable time limits for bonus points or fees they will earn in a day, which might force them to break the rules.

“We have had several meetings with drivers and companies. There are a lot of misconceptions about what the delivery agents can and cannot do, such as riding on the footpaths. They are not pedestrians and are on a vehicle, therefore, cases have to be registered if they violate the rules,” M N Anucheth, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Bengaluru, told DH. 

Many of them use low-speed electric vehicles and hop on footpaths, ride against the flow of traffic, and jump signals, because of the misconception that rules under the Motor Vehicles Act do not apply to them, he noted, adding that only one electric vehicle company has agreed to co-operate in providing basic training and a refresher on rules for its delivery partners.

“We collect spot fines through these drives because that is the only way to deter them from doing such acts that are dangerous to pedestrians, other vehicle users and themselves,” he said.