CHENNAI: There are self-appointed vigilantes on our roads who regularly point out traffic violations by fellow citizens. Armed with smartphones, they click away at pillion riders not wearing helmets, parking obstructions and similar violations and share it with the Greater Chennai Traffic Police’s (GCTP) on Twitter.

The GCTP are only too happy to oblige and fine the offenders. Several citizens have appealed to the GCTP to not encourage such behaviour, especially of taking pictures of women without consent. But the person handling the GCTP’s social media page seems to be from the ‘Anniyan’ school of vigilantism and wonders what was wrong in being the ultimate model citizen and said so in as many words to the naysayers.

Nobody disagrees that road sense is not the highest of priority in India, but the GCTP should show some modicum of faith in their personnel. Various awareness programmes can be conducted for better enforcement of rules rather than encouraging this irresponsible behaviour from our so-called concerned citizens.

Additionally, the GCTP seem to be suffering from selective amnesia of-sorts. While encouraging ‘citizen vigilantes’ with customer-care type responses, their twitter handle posed a question to another citizen who had posted a violation by a motorbike with ‘Police’ sticker on it.

“Were you using a mobile phone while riding to take the picture?” the traffic police wondered.