Dummy police are the newest recruits to law enforcement in India’s southern city of Bangalore, where authorities have adopted an unusual tactic to fight traffic offenders.
Mannequins dressed up as traffic officers — complete with hats, white shirts and fluorescent vests with police insignia — are being placed at major intersections in the hope that they would prompt drivers to observe the rules.
Some even wear sunglasses and masks.
With 8 million vehicles plying the notoriously busy roads in a tech hub renowned for its traffic snarls, police have said that they do not have enough flesh-and-blood officers to direct traffic at all of the intersections.
“The idea is not to scare anybody. The idea is to increase compliance,” Bangalore Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao said. “There are 44,000 intersections in the city, but traffic lights are installed in only about 450 intersections. At the rest, traffic is directed by an officer, or not directed at all.”
He added that officers use a “hide and seek” tactic — swapping the mannequins with actual police officers — to keep drivers on their best behavior.
Bangalore, which has been dubbed the Silicon Valley of India, is home to an estimated 13 million people.
An average of two people die every day on the roads of the megalopolis, with 4,283 crashes reported from January to November last year. Many are blamed on drunk-driving, speeding and drivers ignoring traffic signals.
Last year, there were 50,457 cases of reckless driving and another 57,394 for drunk-driving, official figures showed.
The model officers have received mixed reactions from commuters about whether the dummy ploy would work, with some locals praising police for thinking outside of the box.
“It’s a general human mentality that when you see a policeman, you have fear in your heart: ‘Oh I am doing something wrong, I will not do it,’” clothing company director Vijay Shekhar said.
Others were more skeptical.
Businessman Rohit Kamalkar said that the scheme would not work in a country such as India, where rules are flouted with impunity.
“We do not follow rules even when they [police] are real, so how would it work when they are not moving and running after us?” tech consultant Sapan Agarwal asked.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese