Yesterday a very interesting thing happened. While driving on the road, before the never ending construction of Kadugodi railway overbridge, I was ushered by a group of traffic police standing on the roadside to stop. This was right infront of the Whitefield traffic police station.
A cop comes and tells me in Kannada that "Please get into the traffic police station and find out whethere you have any violations or not". Confused I protested saying I dont have any violations..The traffic police politely says "In case you have jumped a signal or any other violation it will be shown in the computer as we have just got online. You will get a no-violation slip if you dont have any".
So I take my documents and get into the police station. The cop punches my car regn. number into the some software running on the PC and says no violations are reported and hands me a tiny slip (a plain white sheet with a seal of the police station and someone's sign) and sends me on my way. Apparently from now on I believe I need to carry this tiny little slip as a proof that I dont have any violations on my car.
This looks a little unprofessional but the fact that atleast they are onto something gives me some hope.
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Indegenious invention
We are like this only!
problem with maintaining address!?
I know what this could be. I bet I have a clue, These days, they are mailing violations to the address of registered vehicle owners (for ex: refer to VVR's post about how he got reckless driving ticket in mail). In many cases, the police may not have the right addresses. I am guessing the percentage (of wrong addresses) will be pretty high. As a result, there would be many "unanswered" violations.
Why do I think that I could be right? Since we do lifetime registration, and in these days of job related moves, many of us move around more than what our parents did, I bet there are plenty of incorrect addresses out there. So, they may be picking on young techie looking folks for these "no violation" checks as they are the ones who move the most from one temporary address to another.
Perhaps they are randomly picking up "nomad" looking drivers (the ones who may not have current addresses on RTO files).
Whether I have guesses this right or not, its high time we moved to an annual vehicle registration system plus some other RTO office reforms. BTW, one condition for BMTC to get the grant for those 700 new green buses from Ministry of Urban Development is that the city implement those RTO reforms.
I think that in these days of mobile phones, one can assume that every vehicle owner will have a number. Why not just keep the mobile number current, and SMS the tickets?
Online...
Sometime back I checked for violations online:
Search for Traffic Violations
But for some reason, its page is down now. It allowed me to enter any registration number and check for violations recorded.
-- navshot
Could be misused
It allowed me to enter any registration number and check for violations recorded.
That information could be misused if it fell into the wrong hands. It should be accessible only to the handhelds the cops roam around with. It could be made available over the internet if there was sufficient authentication built around it. Like your Vehicle registration number in combination with insurance number, DL number, birth date or something like that.
They could even use the online app to allow for payments, update addresses etc. It will allow them to push some responsibilities back to the user. If you are seeing wrong violation then you can check your details verify them and call them up to sort it out.
I realize this is with BangaloreOne but in general such things should be outsourced. The problem with a lot of govt organizations is they try to do it all themselves when they clearly dont have the expertise or bandwidth. They flood themselves with work they shouldnt be doing. I see this with the IR cleaning division of labour... it blew me away.
I believe the address thing
Check traffic violations online
I got one more link that works:
http://www.btis.in/fines
It shows number of violations and fine amount due.
-- navshot