LAHORE: Ring Road police have fined social media personalities Rajab Butt and Syed Haider a combined Rs3,600 during an ongoing crackdown against overspeeding and dangerous driving.
According to Ring Road police, a zero-tolerance policy against overspeeding on the Ring Road is being implemented, and action is being taken against violators of traffic laws without discrimination.
Police said overspeeding and dangerous driving could become a threat to citizens’ lives, and that no concession would be shown for violations of traffic laws.
Ring Road police have made clear that action against those violating traffic laws will continue to be taken without discrimination in future.
The Lahore Ring Road is a controlled-access expressway encircling the city, built in phases and designed for sustained high-speed travel. Its geometry — long straights, limited intersections, few pedestrian conflicts — is precisely what makes it efficient and what makes it dangerous when posted limits are ignored.
Fatality risk in a collision does not rise in proportion to speed; it rises far more steeply. The energy involved in an impact scales with the square of velocity, which is why enforcement authorities worldwide treat speed management on expressways as the single highest-yield road safety intervention available.
The Ring Road has been the site of repeated serious collisions, a significant proportion involving vehicles travelling well above the posted limit, drivers entering against the flow at interchanges, or motorcycles on a facility not designed for them.
The naming of two well-known social media personalities in an enforcement statement is not incidental. Traffic authorities in Punjab have increasingly publicised action against public figures, on the reasoning that visible enforcement against people with large followings does more to shift behaviour than thousands of anonymous tickets.
There is a substantive concern underlying this. High-performance driving content — acceleration clips, speedometer footage, night runs on empty carriageways — circulates widely on Pakistani social media and is watched overwhelmingly by young men in the highest-risk age band for road fatalities. Where such content is filmed on public roads, the offence is not only the speed but the encouragement of imitation.
Rajab Butt is among the country’s most-followed YouTube and social media personalities.
Overspeeding on Punjab’s roads attracts fines under the Provincial Motor Vehicles Ordinance 1965 and subsequent rules, with enhanced penalties for dangerous driving. Where driving endangers human life, the offence moves beyond a ticketable violation into the territory of the Pakistan Penal Code.
Enforcement on the Ring Road is supported by speed-detection equipment and the automatic number plate recognition infrastructure of the Safe City project, which allows challans to be issued to a registered owner without a roadside stop.
Response online has been mixed, and predictably so. A substantial body of comment has welcomed the demonstration that enforcement applies regardless of profile. Others have questioned the proportionality of a fine measured in thousands of rupees as a deterrent for high-income offenders — a point road safety specialists have raised in more formal terms, arguing that fixed monetary penalties lose deterrent force at the top of the income distribution and that licence points or suspension are the more effective instrument.
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