Bangkok police cleared up a few points of traffic law yesterday after scams involving fake tickets were discovered. Two policemen have been dismissed from the service and face criminal investigation into their alleged involvement in giving private firms blank traffic tickets, said deputy city police chief Maj-General Panu Kerdlarppol.

Truck drivers involved

Expressway 2 Precinct's Sergeant Itthipong Gundee reportedly confessed to giving blank tickets to a contact in a car-transport company while an unnamed officer from Bang Khunthien precinct is accused of handing a book of blank tickets to a group of truck drivers. A probe into another case of fake traffic tickets being used to evade the law, this time in Min Buri, has not yet identified the wrongdoer, said Panu. If your licence is confiscated for a traffic violation, the yellow ticket issued by police allows you to drive for the next seven days.

Fooling the police

The drivers involved in the scam used the fake tickets to fool police who pulled them over into thinking their driving licences had already been confiscated. This way, they could stay on the road indefinitely, however many times they violated traffic law.

However, Panu said that police could fine repeat offenders for failure to present a driver's licence and for failure to pay previous fines, which carries a Bt300 penalty. He explained that carrying a ticket was therefore no guarantee that a policeman would wave through a driver caught breaking the law.