LAHORE: Action against drivers involved in fatal and serious traffic accidents has been tightened further in Lahore, with the licences of 146 such drivers suspended, the city traffic administration has announced.
Chief Traffic Officer Lahore Syed Abdul Raheem Shirazi said that from now on, the licence of the driver held responsible will be suspended in every fatal accident and in every non-fatal accident of a serious nature. Where irresponsible driving is established, he said, the licence will remain suspended for a minimum period of one year.
The CTO warned that a criminal case will be registered against any person who is found driving again despite the suspension of their licence. Drivers held responsible for fatal accidents, he added, will face other legal proceedings alongside the suspension of their driving credentials.
According to the CTO, the suspension of licences in cases involving fatal accidents will be subject to court orders, keeping the administrative penalty aligned with the outcome of judicial proceedings.
Licence suspension is one of the few administrative levers available to traffic authorities in Pakistan that operates independently of the pace of the criminal courts. A driving licence in Punjab is issued and renewed by the licensing branch attached to the district police, and its suspension removes the legal cover for a driver to be on the road at all, regardless of whether a trial in an accident case has concluded.
Lahore’s traffic burden has grown steadily with the expansion of the city’s road network and a sharp rise in registered two-wheelers, which account for a substantial share of casualties in road crashes. Motorcyclists, pedestrians and pillion riders remain the most exposed road users in the city, and traffic managers have repeatedly identified over-speeding, wrong-way driving, lane indiscipline and unlicensed drivers as recurring contributors.
The effectiveness of the new standard will rest largely on detection. A suspended licence only deters if it is checked, which places the burden on roadside verification by wardens and on the integration of licensing records with field enforcement systems. The CTO’s warning that repeat driving on a suspended licence will draw an FIR signals an intent to escalate from administrative penalty to criminal prosecution for those who ignore the bar.
The traffic police have not indicated a timeline for reviewing the 146 suspensions already imposed, nor whether drivers will have a formal appeal forum against suspension decisions.
Leave a Reply