More than 66,000 penalties in a month, and not an offender in sight.
Urban Bystander
By half past six in F-6 Markaz, a bakery had acquired a traffic problem entirely unrelated to its bread. An SUV stood across the pedestrian crossing, its hazard lights blinking with the solemnity of an official notification. The driver remained at the wheel while a passenger went inside to collect something. It would take two minutes.
A double cabin stopped behind it and began to honk.
Constable Tufail asked the SUV driver to move. She explained that she was not parked because she was still sitting inside the vehicle. She then directed his attention towards a motorcyclist stopped on the yellow box fifty yards ahead.
Tufail noted the yellow box. He noted the crossing. He asked again.
She pointed towards a rider blocking the service lane at the far end of the market.
The double cabin driver, prevented from advancing, had meanwhile developed a serious commitment to traffic discipline. Nosy Mynah asked which violation by others angered him most and when he had last broken a rule himself. He answered the first question with considerable feeling.
Mirza waited for the second. “In Islamabad,” Mirza said at last, “two minutes is not a duration. It is a certificate of necessity.”
Two accounts published a week apart, both citing the police, reported more than 66,000 traffic penalties during one month of enforcement. The breakdown included more than 10,000 lane violations, more than 10,000 wrong parking violations, 4,301 tickets for wrong way or careless driving and 316 for occupying crossings or stop lines.
The totals differed slightly. The conclusion did not. Violations had been easy to locate. Offenders were less visible. Beyond the bakery, the question had begun to travel through the city. Which violations by others angered them most, and when had they last broken a rule themselves?
A motorcyclist spoke at length about cars blocking lanes. He then mentioned that he had travelled against traffic that morning. Asked why, he supplied the time but not the reason.
Mirza waited.
The reason did not arrive.
A delivery rider laughed, and the two riders beside him joined in. When the question was put again, so was the laughter.
A woman driver said she was most angered by honking and failure to give way. She broke rules occasionally because nobody else obeyed them. A pedestrian named vehicles stopping on crossings and cars accelerating through a dying red light. He had no car.
A public transport passenger identified VIP movement restrictions as the capital’s most disruptive violation of road discipline. That morning, he had also boarded a moving van.
The reasons were not equal. A passenger dependent on unsafe public transport is not the same as an SUV owner unwilling to walk twenty yards for pastries. Nor is a delivery rider working against an app timer the same as a double cabin driver entering from the wrong direction to save a turn.
Necessity exists. Convenience has merely become skilled at producing its papers.
Back at the bakery, the two minutes had begun to mature.
The lesson comes from above. Convoys freeze lanes. Motorcades run signals. Official movement suspends ordinary time for everyone who is not official. At street level, the privilege becomes smaller but no less recognisable. One press of the hazard button, one wrong turn, one blocked crossing, two minutes.
One traffic constable described a familiar sequence. Motorists denied the offence, offered a resolution that did not involve moving the vehicle, or said, “You don’t know me,” as though the law had confused an important person with an ordinary motorist. Back at the bakery, three drivers had asked Tufail to begin enforcement with someone else.
He began with the SUV. The passenger returned carrying a small paper bag. The SUV driver pointed at the double cabin. The double cabin driver pointed at the rider. The rider pointed back at the SUV.
Every accusation was correct.
The crossing remained blocked. The pedestrian stepped into the road. Three drivers honked at him. Everyone else had a good reason.
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