Despite a sustained campaign against cell phone usage while driving, the amount of fines collected has gone up to Rs 30 lakh in the last nine months. This is up from Rs 3.78 lakh collected in 2015, marking a seven-fold increase in violations in just three years, as discovered in a Right To Information (RTI) query filed by this newspaper.

The traffic police have invested a lot of manpower and money on social media campaigns and public hoardings to caution motorists against speaking on the phone while driving, a report in this paper said. It is time motorists too make a choice between the steering wheel and the phone.