Bhubaneswar: A day after Khurda collector BS Punia made helmets mandatory for two wheeler riders to use overbridges between Khandagiri and Rasulgarh, the cops Tuesday fined more than 200 riders for breaking the rule.
Joint teams of Traffic police and RTO officials conducted checking at multiple locations on these overbridges including Rasulgarh, Jayadev Vihar and Baramunda.
Fines apart, the officials also sensitised the riders on safe riding practices.
That said, the riders expressed their dissatisfaction over the enforcement.
“We didn’t even know of any such rule. It would have been better if the administration created an awareness programme before conducting checking and fining us,” rued a motorcyclist.
“We are enforcing helmets on overbridges as an experimental program. It will initially stay in force for a month. We will analyse the results before considering the next step,” said Sanjay Kumar Behera of Bhubaneswar based RTO-II.
He further added that two-wheeler riders might be entirely barred from using overbridges between Baramunda-Rasulgarh section if this helmet experiment fails.
It might be mentioned here that these overbridges have turned into a deathtrap for two-wheeler riders. As many as nine lives have been lost in 12 accidents since last month till date on this stretch of road.