Visakhapatnam: With nominal penalties being charged, motorists are able to get away by paying fines even as they violate traffic rules now and then. But, it’s not going to continue now as the government decided to impose heavy penalties.

The Centre has created a new motor vehicle law (MV Act 2019) to ensure that every motorist adheres to the traffic regulations. In connection with it, heavy penalties are imposed on those who fail to comply with regulations.

As part of it, Visakhapatnam city police implemented new penalties and City Police Commissioner Shankhabrata Bagchi instructed the officials to enforce it in the city.

According to the traffic police officials, the penalty imposed earlier must be paid within 80 days of challan generation date. If the motorist makes a mistake repeatedly, the fine amount gets hefty.

The state government is also ready to implement the new Motor Vehicle Act approved by the Central government. It’s brought into effect from March 1.

According to the new law, both driver and pillion rider have to wear a helmet. If the pillion rider fails to wear a helmet twice he would be charged Rs 2,000 as a penalty.

If the vehicle driver does not wear a helmet, the first time Rs 1,000 fine will be imposed and if the same person is caught twice, he or she has to pay a fine of Rs 2,000.

The traffic police also impose a heavy fine of Rs 5,000 on minor riders instead of Rs 500. If a motorist is caught by the police, who is not eligible to get a driving license for different reasons, will have to pay a fine of Rs 10,000.

Mobile phones and drunk and drive motorists will be taken to task. If they are caught twice violating the same norm, they have to pay Rs 10,000. In addition, the police impose penalties for violating different traffic rules.

Special drives are being carried out by the RTA officials and traffic police across the city to register cases against traffic violators.

As the penalties were low till now, the violators were not paying any attention while driving the vehicle and ignoring the traffic rules. Keeping their negligence in view, the new Act drafted aims to bring down the number of the violators. In many cases, a number of persons have lost their lives due to a vehicle driver who has not followed traffic rules, including rash driving, over speeding, drunken driving, triple riding, absence of driving license and minor driving. The new penalty system will place a check to the traffic violators.

As part of the drive, MVP police and III-Town police seized vehicles from the youths, who were indulged in bike racing at the beach road on Sunday.