"you no give 100....I cease vehicle your..."

100 rupees fine for using high beam in SH17 expressway?? Seriously?? First I thought the cop was kidding when he asked me 100 rupees but in the next few seconds I understood that he was pretty serious. Okay, it is all cool. Being a bike rider I know how difficult it is when oncoming vehicles do not show the minimum courtesy to dim their lights. So this new (apparently) rule sounds good enough to make the daily traffics more convenient. But the way it is implemented is just too stupid. And yeah, 90 percentages of the traffic rules are implemented with utter stupidity and lack of logic.

The problem with Indian laws and regulations are that they are not meant at correcting people or giving them a chance to improve. Our laws are all just meant at finding a reason for punishing people, collecting the fine and making our lives even worse. I was on Kengeri (still outside Kengeri town in Bangalore – Mysore expressway) when I got pulled over and I thought it was the routine checking for drunk drivers. When the cops saw the papers are all clear they told me 100 rupees for using focus headlamps (I don’t know what these illiterate idiots mean by the things they say) and I had to argue with him to convince that the stock headlamps are provided by the company itself (my ride is a Yamaha R15 and I am using the stock headlamps and no HIDs). Then came the lousiest thing I have ever heard from cops “100 rupees for using high beam”. 

My first confusion was that whether or not I was allowed to use high beam on expressways (with low beam on a 35 watts halo, you cannot see any shit literally) and he said “no use head light in city limits”. I really had no idea that Kengeri was inside Bangalore city because I still have to travel another ten or 12Kms from Kengeri to get any feel of Bangalore and the first hoarding that says “welcome to garden city Bangalore” is in front of Gopalan Arcade near RR nagar. Okay, but I understand that such rules are meant at the general good of everyone on roads. But one miserable fact about Bangalore and its traffic cops are that their only targets are bike riders, truck drivers and other state registered four wheelers and no one else no matter what they do. So, for a city with such inefficient law enforcers, the authority must be a little more concerned about the common people while implementing new regulations.

When the cop was explaining me the new order by traffic commissioner, multitudes of four wheelers passed by elegantly flaunting their 110W (or even better) high beam lights and even HIDs at times. When cops seemed not to bother these perfect car drivers, I asked them why they are not stopping them (to be frank I was expecting an abuse back but this guy was decent enough to not to show the usual POLICE gene and stopped one car for my sake and let him go without charging any fine). 

Without letting a lot of my frustration out here, I will just simply state my concerns point by point

• ·         There should be proper sign boards that can inform the drivers about where restrictions starts and ends (Like the ones that you see in roads of Tamil Nadu and Kerala)

• ·         Define the head light power range rather than using a generic term “high beam” because my 35 watts high beam is no match even for a standard 55 watts low beam of a four wheeler.

• ·         Update the outdated regulations with timely improvements. 50 Kmph speed limit is literally impossible to follow and even the cops know it.

• ·         Implement the rules equally for everyone on road because senseless car drivers are the major reason for Bangalore traffic problems.

• ·         Educate your cops to be efficient

This post might sound like I am generalizing a little too much when I talk about the cops but I know that there are good cops too. But their percentage is sadly very less. I remember when one of my classmate (female) wanted to reach KBS Majestic after seeing her mom off at Kalasipalayam at late night, a traffic cop found her standing alone in the road and dropped her till bust stand on his bike. I have seen many cops helping a hand in pushing the broken down vehicles inside Bangalore city. I have paid fines a few times when interceptors have caught me and I have never felt anything bad about paying it. But this time it was little too annoying because I didn’t understand the logic of letting cars with high beams go off while catching relatively less harmful bikes.