GROWING LAWLESSNESS ON INDIAN ROADS

The first week of every New Year is observed as the 'road safety week' throughout the country. The traffic police launches campaigns to sensitise people and make them obey the traffic rules.

 

However, any semblance of civilised driving disappears soon after, even before the official rituals are over and campaign-hoardings are pulled down.

 

For the rest of the year, road users need three things to return home safely: good brakes, a good horn and, most importantly, good luck!

 

In civilised societies, vehicles stop to give way to vulnerable road users like pedestrians. In India, it's the other way round. Indeed, lawlessness is at its worst display on Indian roads.

 

As a result, the accident rate is intolerably high; 35 per thousand vehicles. In contrast, for several developed and developing countries it is in the range of 4-15. According to the World Road Statistics, the per vehicle casualty rate is the highest for India.

 

With just one per cent of the world vehicles, we account for 10 per cent of fatalities. On an average, more than 400 people die or get permanently incapacitated in road accidents everyday!

 

Even by conservative estimates, economic costs of accidents and congestion are at least 3 per cent of the GDP. The actual numbers are much larger since many accidents go unrecorded.

 

The omnipresent road-chaos aside, the country has a law known as the Motor Vehicle (MV) Act. The law has two stated objectives: to minimise the number of accidents and to provide just compensation to victims of road accidents.

 

The Supreme Court has declared the law welfare legislation. The 1988 amendment to the MV Act had adopted several measures to check the accidents' menace. Among others, it increased the fines for traffic offences and also the ex-post accident liability of injurer drivers.

 

The result, as an analysis of accident data has revealed, was a structural and downward shift in the accident rate. These measures worked notwithstanding the popular beliefs about the corruption in the traffic police and judicial delays.

 

But the amendment has outlived its utility. While the per capita income has increased more than threefold – from Rs 11,899 in 1988-89 to Rs 38,084 in 2008-09 – fines have remained stagnant at ridiculously low levels.

 

Most of the fines have remained in the range of Rs 100-400. So it is not surprising that accidents have gone up from little over two lakh in 1988 to more than four lakh in 2008. During the last 4-5 years the annual rate of increase has been 8 per cent or more.

 

The intended legal objectives can be realised only if the executive enforces traffic rules that are apt and effective. And the judiciary provides timely relief to victims. Unfortunately, both organs of the state have failed society.

 

Courts have failed to ensure an expeditious settlement of disputes and to provide adequate compensation to the victims. As a result, the accident liability has no deterrent effect on the arrogant, drunken and reckless drivers.

 

However, the failure of the executive in enforcing and updating the traffic rules is more serious. It has resulted in excessively large number of accidents and the resultant legal disputes. This, in turn, has compounded the problems created by judicial delays and has further undermined the victims' entitlement to timely relief.

 

Several measures by the Central and state governments can help in the matter. For instance, a majority of the victims on city roads as well as highways are pedestrians, bicyclists and other vulnerable road users.

 

In the absence of exclusive lanes, these people fail to dodge dangerously driven vehicles. Provisioning of sidewalks, cycle-tracks and side-lanes can drastically reduce fatalities by making roads safer.

 

Also to apprehend the reckless drivers, more policemen and high-tech equipment can be deployed. Unfortunately, these crucial measures are costly and, therefore, get postponed year after year.

 

However, enhancing the existing fines is costless to impose and perhaps prove more useful. In fact, in the absence of effective fines the other measures may help. To illustrate, during 2009 the Delhi Traffic Police launched several awareness drives. Besides, it used more of men as well as machinery to apprehend offenders.

 

Consequently, the number of challans issued went up from 34.1 lakh in 2008 to 41.77 lakh in 2009. Yet, the number of accidents declined only marginally.

 

In fact, the number of fatal accidents in 2009 was 12 per cent higher than in the previous year. Why? Because fines are negligible. Police efforts would have been more successful, had fines been substantial.

 

Regrettably, the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill, in its present form, leaves much to be desired. The proposed increases in fines are nominal. For example, for excessive speeding the fine has been increased only by Rs 100, and there is no effective increase in fine for dangerous driving! In addition to the higher fines, the prospective law should provide for a scheduled increase in fines over time to offset their depreciation.