Over 62,000 fined in Delhi last year for not wearing seat belt

In 2017, the Delhi traffic police had fined over 620,000 people for not using seat belts; the number rose to a little over 650,000 the following year. In 2019, the number decreased to 500,000.

Traffic police fined 62,190 people for not wearing seat belts in 2021, a 35% rise from 45,907 people penalised for the offence in 2020, according to Delhi Road Crash Report 2021 released on Friday, an increase that could be in part attributed to the pandemic lockdown in 2020.

Seat belts have been in focus since former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry was killed in a car crash earlier this month. (PTI)

The fines for not wearing seat belts, however, has seen a sharp decline over the years. In 2017, traffic police had fined over 620,000 people for not using seat belts; the number rose to a little over 650,000 the following year. In 2019, the number decreased to 500,000.

Seat belts have made the headlines since the death of business tycoon Cyrus Mistry earlier this month in a car crash. He was supposedly not wearing a seat belt while travelling to Mumbai in the rear seat of a car.

In Delhi, fines for not wearing seat belts were second only to violations of not wearing helmets while riding two-wheelers, which accounted for 1, 077, 60 traffic tickets. Both the violations were among those traffic rules that are still being caught manually, unlike speeding, lane driving and red-light jumping, which are now being automatically detected and prosecuted through detection cameras installed across the city.

While drivers of passenger vehicles accounted for 49,652 seat belt violations in 2021, people driving trucks were the second highest violators under the category.

Seat belt violation by drivers of public buses saw a two-fold increase in 2021 compared with the previous year. In 2020, 138 public bus drivers were fined for not wearing the seat belt while driving, The number rose to 282 the following year.

“Although fatalities of drivers and passengers not wearing seat belts may not be high, use of seat belts certainly lowers the risk of deaths during crashes on roads,” said Surender Singh Yadav, special commissioner of police, traffic.

Although the number of tickets issued to owners of vehicles in which passengers on rear seats were caught not wearing seat belts was not available in the road crash report, a police officer said awareness and enforcement drives have been intensified following the tragic death of Mistry and his friend Jehangir Pandole when the car they were travelling in with two others crashed into a concrete barricade near Palghar in Maharashtra earlier this month. Mistry was on the rear seat and allegedly not wearing a seat belt, police said.

Traffic police in Delhi have recently started a drive against vehicles in which passengers are caught travelling on rear seats without wearing seat belts. Nearly 70 such tickets have been issued since Thursday, when the prosecution driver was launched in central Delhi.

“The seat belt violation enforcement is going on in other parts of Delhi,” said Yadav. “More than prosecution, we are focusing on encouraging and educating commuters about the seat belt safety and its role in curbing fatalities of road crashes.”