The Bengaluru Traffic Police have taken to installing mannequins wearing the traffic police uniforms in a bizarre attempt to curb traffic violations on the roads. Pictures show the mannequins wearing the standard traffic cop uniform: high-visibility jackets, white shirt, khaki pants, and steel-toe boots. Some have even been spotted wearing sunglasses.
Chief of Traffic, Ravi Kanthe Gowda, says, “There are lots of people who commit traffic offences when there are no police around to catch them. We put these up so that the people know there is police presence around.”
The traffic police have installed around 30 life-size traffic police mannequins all over the city on a trial basis, using the assumption that drivers behave better on the road when there is some authority watching over them.
Bengaluru Traffic Police statistics indicate that the number of fatalities have declined in recent years. The figures for fatal accidents in 2017 was 4,455 and in 2018, it was 4,133. However, what has been noticed is that blatant traffic violations occur all over the city in the absence of the traffic police: signal jumps, cell-phone usage, and not wearing helmets. There is also a need for increased traffic monitoring as the number of vehicles on Bengaluru’s roads go up every year.
Ravi added, “We’re changing the location of the mannequins every day, so that repeat offenders can be cautioned and we can use our workforce in spots that really need our attention.”
However, this is not the first time that the police have taken to using a unique measure to make people obey traffic rules. In 2013, the Bengaluru Traffic Police had installed cardboard cutouts at busy junctions of the city. The move was met with a lot of ridicule at the time, but some road users said it had a positive effect on road traffic behaviour as they were actually tricked into thinking it was a real cop.