Are all traffic cops same? Share your experience

Exactly, be polite with them, they may leave you.

Tata Indica Dle '04:Sold, Hyundai Santro Xing XS '04

    Actually some of the civilians are responsible for  some of the bad traffic cops. When caught for violations they lure the police men by giving bribe without paying the actual fine. As this become a daily affair, the police man thinks that it is his right to get easy money.

Please pay the prescribed fine if caught for a violation of law. There is nothing wrong in pleading ignorance or accidental violation to the cop and if he lets you free it is ok. After all traffic violations are only petty offences and not included in the category of major crimes.  But do not try to get away from them by paying petty bribes.

Even though this is correct it do not give moral right for cops to be corrupt. They very well know the risks and difficulties involved in the job while accepting it.

          I am not sure if this is applicaple to any states of India. Look the salary of a constable in Kerala. The net salary of a constable entering the post including all the allowances comes to 15k+. Remember that they are entitled for pension after retirement.

        That is really true. In fact most of the men joining police even as constables are having high educational qualifications--even professional degrees.

       They are selected from us. The oppressive pre-independent British Police system followed even now is responsible for the other side of police. Let's hope that the community policing efforts initiated in many parts of our country give a human face to our police and make them people friendly .

You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house.

How true. Doesn't any senior police officer ever challenge this or take this up with the government? In all, this makes the police a very handy tool for the administration that uses it for its own protection rather than protection of the public.

S = k.I^2, where S is the amount of stupidity a species possesses, I is the intelligence the species has and k is the universal constant of stupidity.

           This is a policy matter to be handled by the Governments. The police is supposed to only obey the rules prevailing in the country. But changes are coming.

           The irony is that the British setup the police system in their own country in a people friendly manner, but in their colonies the Irish system was established. The Irish police system was more of a military nature to suppress the Catholic independence struggle.

       Let us hope for some people's movement like the anti corruption movement is needed in our country to change the police policy.

You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house.

I agree and that is why I said that I do no advocate this. But how many options do people in India have when it comes to selecting a job. Even to get a constables job they need to go through different challenges and situations. Its not as easy as we think. We can shrug it off saying it was their choice but it they too thought like that then think how things would be. Moreover like you say many of them have professional degrees as well. Most of the times its the lack of options as well.

Cummon mate. What I am talking about here is what they have to face while in service. After retirement they might have many benefits and thats not the question here. After retirement if they ask for a bribe you would shut them off right in the face right. Most government jobs have pensions but how many have such working conditions. Even basic ammenities like toilets are a problem. The conditions of work are almost inhumae and cannot ben compensated monetarily. So lets leave the retirement part out of this as that would be a completely new discussion.

An accident is generally the result of a screw loose in the nut behind the steering wheel

Actually I am not against the facts presented by you regarding the ground reality about the work of  policemen. I just tried to tone down the sympathetic picture of common police men portraited by you in your first post; to prevent our fellow members from parting away their money to traffic cops at the height of sympathy/empathy (I remember reading a post by Mathew giving some tip to motor vehicle inspector hearing his family problems ).

The retirement part was emphasised only to compare the 'good salary without pension' of private jobs and 'less salary with pension' of government jobs.

You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house.

That is 100% true and I too agree with it and that is the reason why I have mentioned in both my posts that "I do not advocate that what they are doing is correct" . Pension is fine but that too is not a heavy amount. To be frank I have come across extremely few people in the past so many years who have asked for bribe as such. Most of them directly start writing the receipt for the fine they are going to charge as soon as they catch someone. Also I think the earlier you pay the fine and leave the earlier you can leave. Most often these days negotiations only leads to waste of time and nothing else.

An accident is generally the result of a screw loose in the nut behind the steering wheel

Only for information, there are some related threads in our forum connected to this topic.

1. Regarding challan from traffic cops

2. Documents verified by traffic cops

In my driving experience, I did not have any good or bad experience from traffic cops. Actually I always evade the checking thanks to the habit of wearing seat belt. The chances of being checked by cops if wearing helmets in two wheelers and seat belts in others are very less. And if you have family along with you the chances come down again.

You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house.

Yeah - that's so true. Nowadays I even carry a list of traffic offences and their fines (taken from the RTO website) along with me just in case some cop tries to fleece me.

In a hilarious incident, one a friend of mine was stopped for not heeding the cop (he asked him to stop at a pedestrian crossing, but my friend continued to drive since signal was off). Cop took his license and asked him to take it from the RTO after paying fine. My friend insisted that he is willing to pay the full fine there itself...cop said he is not carrying the receipt book to which my friend simply asked the cop to go and get it - all the while insisting that there is no need to go to the RTO since he is willing to pay the full fine then and there. Result: Cop allowed him to go away!

S = k.I^2, where S is the amount of stupidity a species possesses, I is the intelligence the species has and k is the universal constant of stupidity.