Pass the Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill without delay – every day wasted means many lives lost

By GK Pillai and Piyush Tewari

In February this year, Sumit Singhal and his family were returning home after attending a wedding in Gurgaon. His wife was sitting in the front and his mother and their three-year-old kid were tucked in the rear seat. An overloaded truck tried to overtake Sumit’s car unsuccessfully. It skidded and landed on Sumit’s car with impact. Sumit, his wife and mother were killed on the spot. The lone survivor in this tragic crash was the three-year-old kid, who lost his parents and grandmother in an instant. The distraught child was trapped inside the car for hours before he was rescued.

As tragic as this case was, unfortunately it’s by no means an exception. Annually, on average, 1.5 lakh people are killed and close to 10 lakh are injured in road crashes across India. As per ministry of road transport data, over 14% fatalities were due to overloading of vehicles. In 2017, 20,848 people were killed due to overloading of vehicles – an average of 57 deaths per day.

The election hustle has prompted the country to think about growth and what lies ahead. Yet, it is important to note that if drastic measures are not taken to curtail the menace of road crashes, the landscape of progress will remain marred by enormous loss of life that is largely preventable.

In the wake of the road crash in June 2014 that claimed the life of prominent leader and Union minister Gopinath Munde, there was a big surge in political attention towards the sorry state of road safety in India. The crash where Munde’s car was hit by another, causing him several serious injuries and a fatal cardiac arrest, raised all the right questions about everything that was wrong with our approach towards safety on roads, especially the fractured policy framework in which road safety is viewed.

As a tribute to him Nitin Gadkari, who took charge of the road transport ministry in the same Cabinet, promised to bring a strong law to make roads safer. The initial momentum however fizzled and all that now remains is, the lapsed Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill (MVAB). MVAB had several crucial road safety provisions. For instance, currently the fine for overloading – a rampant practice that killed Sumit and his family in a flash – is only Rs 2,000. This is hardly a deterrent for truck owners and consigners. MVAB proposed to increase it to Rs 20,000 to halt the practice. It also looked to address issues that have been completely unaddressed in the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, such as the safety of children during commute or the liability of road contractors and engineers for creating faulty, accident-prone roads.

The pandemic of road crashes needs to be on top of the priority list for the new government, not only because several top political leaders have been victims but because the issue also had a profound impact on our society and economy as the major cause of death of young, productive people in India. Tragically for India, the issue did not find mention in the election manifestos of any of the major national political parties. With a new government in place, all political formations must clarify their stand on road safety, especially protection of the most vulnerable road users such as children. The new government must address this “mass killer”, as Supreme Court has called it, in its first 100 days agenda.

Currently, India has no central legislation governing the protection of pedestrians. The penalties for irresponsible road behaviour that lead to serious injuries or fatalities have remained minimal for the last three decades and have consequently failed to deter violators. What is even more upsetting are the violations committed by juvenile drivers. A recent study by SaveLIFE Foundation shows that 63.3% of the children who admitted to underage driving shared that they started learning how to drive between the ages of 9 to 14.

With our country lagging behind in its basic road safety measures and regulations, it is even more imperative for us to now stand up for road safety and educate others to do the same. Through a common-sense road safety law and its implementation, we can ensure that no three-year-old is orphaned again merely because the government of the day failed to take a stand for the safety of his family.

GK Pillai is former Union Home Secretary and Piyush Tewari, Founder of SaveLIFE Foundation, a road safety non-profit