This story is from January 20, 2020

Bike stunts at 150kmph on Yamuna Expressway

Disrupting the languid flow of a Sunday morning, 12 bikers whizzed past commuters on the Yamuna Expressway at nearly double the speed limit. Bike racers are back. Caught on camera. But with an impunity that follows an ill-defined mechanism to deal with it.
On cam: Bikers perform stunt on Yamuna Expressway
A group of bikers was caught on camera, racing and performing stunts on Yamuna Expressway on Sunday morning.
GREATER NOIDA: Disrupting the languid flow of a Sunday morning, 12 bikers whizzed past commuters on the Yamuna Expressway at nearly double the speed limit. Bike racers are back. Caught on camera. But with an impunity that follows an ill-defined mechanism to deal with it.
In six videos that started doing the rounds on social media, about a dozen bikers can be seen racing, three of whom are seen performing wheelies.
All bikes had Delhi registration plates. The bikers appear to have entered the Yamuna Expressway from Pari Chowk, racing till Rabupura beyond Sports City around 9am on Sunday. The bikers are yet to be identified. And, with no mechanism to check racing, it has not been a priority for traffic police.
Traffic inspector Ram Rattan Singh, in charge of the Jewar area, said patrolling units on the expressway have not filed any complaint. Without a complaint, he said, there is not much that can be done. “Cameras have been installed on the Yamuna Expressway to monitor traffic. Since there is no one to stop commuters on the highway, vehicles are impounded and seized only when directions are given. For instance, if vehicles are parked near Zero Point, we take action when we are instructed to. For speeding, on the other hand, challans are generated automatically,” Singh said.
Later in the day, however, Greater Noida police decided to lodge an FIR against the bikers once the area where they were racing is identified.
“There are three cameras between Zero Point and the Jewar toll. We are scanning the footage. Action will be taken against the bikers on the basis of what we find in the footage. There are three to four police stations along the Yamuna Expressway. We need to see where the act was performed. Once that is clear, an FIR will be registered for rash driving, endangering life of others and under other MVA provisions,” additional DCP Ranvijay Singh said.

The Noida-Greater Noida Expressway, which merges into the Yamuna Expressway at Zero Point, has been notorious for racing — even horses raced along the stretch in 2017. In many such instances, the race has been fatal.
In 2012, Delhi-based Kunal Bhatia died while attempting a stunt on his Harley Davidson on the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway. His helmet was crushed and he died after sustaining multiple fractures in the head. Five years before that, two MBA students died while racing against a dozen others on the same highway when their bike hit a culvert and they were thrown 15 metres away.
he only way out, experts said, is to impound the vehicles and impose heavy fines to discourage the practice. “The vehicles should be impounded for 10-15 days. No public road is meant for speeding. They should find racing tracks if they have to. Nothing will change if the bikers are not afraid of consequences,” said Anurag Kulshreshta, president of TRAX, a road safety NGO.
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