T(a)inted glass flouts law

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Among the neverending list of existing bans meant to improve the traffic situation in Delhi, the ban on tinted glasses seems to have gone missing. Paying the price for the same are commuters who find it difficult to drive around cars with dark tinted glasses. In fact, in a recent case, where a 52-year-old businessman, identified as Mukesh Singhal, allegedly raped an undergraduate student of Delhi University inside his car in West Delhi, police officials say that passersby could not see or hear the girl screaming as the car had tinted glasses and it was raining heavily.
Even as 100 per cent tinted glasses are not allowed in the capital, nobody seems to be following it, with many cars with 100 per cent non-visibility being spotted on the roads. “The use of dark, black or reflective glasses in vehicles is not permitted by law. The glass of the windscreen and rear window of motor vehicles should have a visibility of at least 70% and side windows a minimum visibility of 50%. At present, the problem is that we don’t really have any instrument to read the accurate level of visibility of glasses. Though there is a fine of Rs 100 for defaulters. For now, we are in the process of getting the right instruments,” says R.K. Pandey, a Delhi traffic police official.
Surprisingly, there’s little “fear of the law” when it comes to paying the fine. “Often young boys come to us with brand new cars and ask for dark tinted glasses. Since we don’t have zero visibility sheets available, people ask for detachable ones, which can be used on the front mirror,” says Sunil, a car accessories dealer from West Delhi.
Those, who’ve suffered the aftermath of being hit by careless drivers of cars with tinted glasses (with youngsters consuming alcohol), complain that Rs 100 fine does not deter offenders from “becoming invisible”. Says Dr Richa Kakkar, whose car was hit recently by an Indica, “My car was parked with the parking lights on, when this car hit us from the back, and pushed my car to the other side of the road. He was consuming alcohol in the car. With tinted glasses, these people don’t care about other vehicles on the road and they are given freedom to drink and drive.”
If you ask 23-year-old Abhishek Sharma (name changed on request) about the visibility of the glasses in his new Chevrolet Optra, he will say, “I don’t know”. “I just asked the accessories guy to make them really dark, he showed me a few patterns and I picked one of them. I guess there’s hardly any visibility if you trying to look from the outside into my car. Even if I’m caught, I don’t mind paying Rs 100 as fine,” he says.
More so, there are no guidelines for accessory dealers to follow, which results in unreasonable demands by customers. Says Sumit Sachdeva of Standard Accessories, “Most customers are confused about the law on tinted glasses and want less than 50 per cent visibility. But we always suggest to get 35 per cent tinted glasses, as it makes the air conditioning affective. Plus, we have not been given any guidelines to follow.”