A speed radar in use on Red Road. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Armed with speed radars, police teams on Tuesday went about booking motorists for violating acceleration limits that very few knew existed.

The speed limits for 85 thoroughfares had been announced just 24 hours earlier, and the police seemed to think that was about all they needed to do before cracking the whip. Himangshu Das Mahapatra, the chief cardiac surgeon at Peerless Hospital, was one of those who were booked for speeding on the Bypass. Like most people, he didn’t know a speed radar capable of taking multiple photographs and recording acceleration data would be watching as he drove to work.

“It was around noon and I was driving down EM Bypass from Salt Lake when a team of officers intercepted my car and said they would slap a case for speeding. They claimed I was driving at 71kmph, going by photographs taken by their speed radar,” he said.

The surgeon told the police team he was happy at speed limits being fixed to curb reckless driving, but they should have informed the public about the rules before enforcing them. “The roads would be safer if the police also book rogue bus drivers,” he said.

This is not the first time that changes in traffic rules have been enforced at short notice, and without any awareness campaign. Last month, the traffic department altered the timings of one-way movement on 44 roads after distributing merely 2,000 leaflets and making a mention of the change on its website. Even that was done only a day before the changed timings took effect.

The traffic department said 15 cases were filed on the first day of the crackdown on speeding. The offenders included taxi drivers.

“The Central Motor Vehicles Act specifies the maximum speed limit for a car and it is the responsibility of a driver to know it. I will not go into whether these are checked when someone gets a driving licence, but simply saying one is ignorant can’t be an excuse for speeding,” deputy commissioner (traffic) Manoj Verma said.

On whether the police would start an awareness campaign to increase compliance, the officer said: “We will put up boards across the city, but that will take a few days. I was present on EM Bypass and noticed that the speed of most cars didn’t cross 50kmph.”