I got served! Speeding in Bangalore

On Saturday evening I was served with a 300 rupee ($7) speeding ticket in Bangalore. This might sound like one of those hard to believe stories. You might be saying, yeah right, I found water on the moon. How could you be possibly get a speeding ticket in a city famous for its traffic jams? Well, this was one of those weaker moments and the Bangalore traffic police, who are already tech savvy, took advantage of the situation.

The incident happened on a stretch of the outer ring road (ORR). The ORR stretches from Hebbal to Silk board and is the fastest growing IT corridor in India as per Vestian Global Workplace Services. ORR runs for 30 kilometers and accounts for 25 percent of Bangalore’s IT space. For that simple reason this stretch also provides one of the better laid out roads with three lanes for traffic. Bangalore city thought of making it even better by laying flyovers and underpasses to make the ORR signal free. A noble ambition which has put commuters through various convolutions and unending traffic hurdles. It might be the nicest stretch in 2-3 years time. Right now it’s a mess and yet provides few kilometers of brake free driving.

Bangalore traffic police noted the speeding opportunity provided by this stretch and ambushed. Two policemen tried to stop my car which was going at a speed of 70 kmph, the limit on that road is 60 kmph. I pulled over waiting to know the reason and in less than 10 seconds I was notified of the speed restrictions and I had to pay a fine of Rs. 300. I wanted to be sure so I went out and approached the Interceptor which is a Chevrolet Tavera equipped with the speed gun, laptop, printer and few other gadgets. Just to be sure that I wasn’t being duped into this, I checked my offence on the laptop which they had. It was showing 70 kmph. Now convinced I took the courage to ask for a picture and the operator was kind enough to let me take a shot of the thing. Here it is :

As you can see at the bottom of the screen the SpeedZone is 60kmph and the actual speed is 70 kmph. The silver colored car in the red cross hairs is my car. This is the picture of the laptop.

This gentleman in the picture picture below is the reason why I had to pay the 300 rupee fine. He holds in his hand a money spinning gadget which tracks the speed of oncoming traffic. Whoever exceeds the speed limit of 60 kmph will pay a fine of 300 rupees. At least five vehicles were pulled over in as many minutes, which made them 1500 rupees in 5 minutes. Though an extrapolation wouldn’t work here an average of 1 in 5 vehicles are exceeding the speed limits. This stretch is one of the busiest in Bangalore. How much would the city earn with this interceptor? My guess is that with the money earned it could deploy more of these interceptors in more stretches. However that might not be necessary because there aren’t many stretches which provide this kind of opportunity. Most of the roads in Bangalore are clogged and staying at the speed limit is hardly a concern. May be the money is keeping the Karnataka government stable, you know.

Well there you go, you can get a speeding ticket in India, even if the vehicles aren’t going that fast. And finally the honors were done by the Blackberry. 

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