Continuing their campaign against drunken driving, Delhi Police on Saturday warned the denizens of the city to obey rules on New Year’s Eve and strictly eschew drunken driving.
“We are prepared to come down heavily on all violations, particularly drunken driving,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Satyendra Garg posted on the force’s Facebook page which has more than 90,000 followers.
“Are Delhi people prepared to behave responsibly on New Year’s Eve: I know most of us always remain on the right side of law,” he added. Warning inebriated drivers who might take to the wheel, Garg said that a large number of teams would be deployed on the roads of Delhi and stringent checking would be carried out.
“We will have women officers in the team too, so that we can check wayward women drivers,” said Garg. The officer further added that last year’s New Year’s Eve was incident-free and that the police were committed to make the roads a safe place for revelers this time too.
“Last year, we had no unfortunate event during New Year’s Eve celebrations. We are committed to make this year’s celebrations safe too, for law abiding people,” said Garg. The police would be prosecuting drunk drivers between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m. on the night of Dec 31 and Jan 1. The legal permissible limit of driving under the influence of alcohol is 40 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood.
Till Nov 30, 2011, the police had prosecuted 15,954 for drunk driving. In 2000, 689 people were prosecuted for the offence and the figure doubled to 1,545 in 2001. It further rose to 2,464 in 2002 and 2,793 in 2003. There was a marginal drop in 2004 when the figure was 2,664, but it again went up to 3,551 in 2005 and to 4,286 in 2006.
A slight dip was witnessed again in 2007 with 4,192 cases, but it again shot up and doubled in 2008 with 8,296 drunken driving cases. In 2009, there were 12,784 prosecutions and the figure was 11,388 last year.
