The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Motor Vehicle Accidents (MVA) in Thimphu increased by 15 cases in 2016 compared with the previous year according to records of the traffic division of the Royal Bhutan Police.
There were 34 registered cases in 2015. This went up to 49 cases last year, which resulted in 15 deaths (12 male and 3 female) and 189 injured. The most common offence was drink driving with 141 cases followed by unlicensed driving with 59 cases. Unsafe U-Turn’s was the least committed offence
Besides negligence the Thimphu Traffic OSP said the slight increase in MVA could be due to increase in number of vehicles. There are 83,538 vehicles in the country of which more than 50 percent is in Thimphu.
He said the speed detector initiative could not be done regularly because of a lack of equipment. “We only have two speed detectors,” he said.
He said offenders are first warned and then the license punched. Three punched on a license leads to a suspense of the license for six months.
If a person fails to abide by traffic rules even after repeated warning and penalties then the court will cancel the license as per RSTA rules and regulation 1999.
