The road transport secretary got three challans for speed violation on a particular stretch in the capital. Guess why? He missed the speed limit sign which was placed “almost” behind a tree.
Poor placement of signs – often behind trees and poles – on Delhi roads result in vehicle owners getting “challan surprises“. It was no different for Union road transport secretary Anurag Jain.
“The system does not recognise who the owner is and I’ve paid challan thrice for speeding. But my problem was different. I took up with police the point that the speed signs should be visible to me. I thought the speed limit was 60 kmph on that stretch and my vehicle was at 61 kmph. Usually, this should not have been the reason for getting a challan,” he said.
Essential to place road signs at right spot: Transport secretary
Sharing his experience on Friday, Jain said “technology treats all commuters equally”, and also flagged how it is essential to place road signs “at the right spot” so that no driver misses them.
Jain said he sent a person to check the speed limit so that he could take a call whether to challenge the challans. “The person told me that 50 kmph was the speed limit sign mentioned on the board. Later, I went on that stretch, I found that the signage was put at a spot, which had a tree in front of it. You can spot it only when you are very close to it,” he said.
This is not the first time when a road transport secretary has flagged poor placement of signages. Earlier, one of his predecessors, Y S Malik had recalled how he missed a direction signage on Delhi-Chandigarh highway since it was too small.
Faulty road signage and signals are, to a great extent, responsible for massive traffic jams, road accidents and pile-ups, claimed a study by the Institute of Road Traffic Education. The study conducted in 2017 had found how over 70% of road signage in Delhi are not put according to prescribed norms. It found that of 1,514 road signage that were examined across 14 major stretches in Delhi, 1,098 did not meet the standards.
