Underage driving remains traffic police’s Achilles’ heel

Despite a law being in place, teenagers flout it with impunity much to the dismay of law enforcement

LAHORE:

Despite hundreds of thousands of underage driving fines being issued in Punjab over the past decade, the province is not any nearer to getting minor drivers off its roads.

Every part of the country struggles with an underage driving problem but the country’s most populous province, in particular, has it worse.

According to documents obtained by The Express Tribune, a record 1,335,118 fines were issued in Punjab for driving under 18 years of age from 2012 to 2021. Tariq Rasheed, a traffic warden who serves in the Gulberg and Defence area of Lahore, said that in his experience posh areas have the most underage drivers. “I write nearly a 100 challans everyday in this part of Lahore.”

Similarly, Deputy Superintendent (DSP), Munir Ahmed, who supervises traffic operations on the Mall Road area of Lahore, commenting on the illegal practice, said that it occurs most often on the weekend. “Usually at night time from Friday to Sunday is when we issue the most fines for underage driving,” Ahmed explained.

However, despite the high number of fines issued, DSP Ahmed believes the practice has not been curbed “because whenever a violator gets caught, he simply calls up a relative or parent, who then force us to let the child go.” While some minors are let off the hook, former additional inspector general (IG) traffic, Punjab, Muhammad Altaf Qamar believes doing so contributes to a rise in accidents. Qamar was of the view that youngsters, who are enabled by their parents, when put behind the steering wheel drive recklessly with no regard for others thus contributing to the rise in accidents.

“However, that is only one part of the equation. Punjab’s dilapidated roads and lack of proper road safety infrastructure has also contributed to the growing number of vehicular crashes,” the former traffic police official said.

In the past decade, a total of 48,072 accidents have occurred in 36 districts of the province, in which 30,208 people lost their lives and 57,059 met with injuries. In the provincial capital, Lahore, alone, the number of accidents, during the same time, stands at 9,653 with 5,772 people losing their lives and 8,207 getting injured. Deputy Inspector General Traffic Police, Rao Abdul Karim, when asked about the rising number of accidents and underage driving, said that there were many defects in the system which they were trying to correct and special teams had been formed in this regard.

“As far as the underage drivers are concerned, the violator’s car or motorcycle is seized and shifted to the concerned police station, and released only after payment of the fine upon orders of the court,” Karim told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2022.