Police in India's high-tech hub Bangalore are trying a new way to reduce traffic offences - using cardboard cops to scare drivers into believing the long arm of the law is watching them. Road deaths have surged in India despite a low rate of car ownership with a lethal combination of poor law enforcement, untrained drivers and bad roads making the country one of the world's leading centres of road deaths.
Many Indian drivers will only obey traffic rules if they think law enforcers will reach out and apprehend them "and we can't be omnipresent", additional Bangalore police commissioner M.A. Saleem told AFP Monday. "Drivers in Indian cities violate traffic rules when there are no cops around - they jump traffic lights and go the wrong way on one-way streets," he said.
"These cut-out cops are very effective and they can be on the job seven days a week," Saleem added. Such life-size flatpack cutouts are frequently used in places like Britain and North America as a crime prevention measure but Saleem said he believed it was the first time such an idea had been employed in Indian cities. So far, three khaki-clad cardboard policemen have been deployed on major roads in the city, known as the home of India's flagship outsourcing industry. One cardboard policeman was stolen last week but that has not discouraged Saleem who said the fake policemen will now be removed when it is dark to reduce chances of theft.
Comments
Comments are closed.