Road fatalities spur need for strong laws

A few months ago, five-year-old Om cried for over an hour as his parents Aparna and Mangesh lay injured on the road after being hit by a bus. Minutes later the whole family died on the road. No one came forward to help.

“Most of the time, bystanders don’t offer any help because they do not want to be harassed by the police, courts and hospitals,” says Piyush Tiwari, founder and president of Save Life Foundation, in his petition on road safety.

He posted the petition on Change.org and the result was his cause was featured
on national show Satyamev Jayate. “Last March, I lost four of my friends from IIT Delhi to a road accident. They died because nobody helped them immediately. I believed this problem had a solution. Through this show we brought into light the dangers of Indian roads and what we should do,” says Tiwari, who is making all effort to bring changes in the Road Safety Law.

Recently, in a panel discussion on Road Transport and Safety Bill, 2014, Tiwari presented draft legislation along with Aditya Rao, one of the legal experts involved in drafting of the Bill. The foundation collected recommendations for the new Bill from 10 State governments including comments from civil society like NGOs, corporate and international experts.

“The reasons for India’s exceptionally high number of road accidents include bad road user behaviour, flawed road design and engineering, weak enforcement of traffic laws and the lack of rapid trauma care. The sole statute governing Road Safety in India, the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 (MVA) has proved ineffective in addressing any of the aforementioned issues decisively,” says Tiwari.

“The law deals exclusively with motorised transport and does not set out road safety parameters or regulate the flow of non-motorised traffic in urban agglomerates,
highways and rural areas. The Act has seen no amendments in the past 13 years and is evidently a deficient legislation with respect to tackling the epidemic proportions
that road accidents have reached in India,” he says.

Therefore, during  the discussion Aditya Rao highlighted 10 major issues – establishment of a national lead agency for cohesive, multilateral coordination, statutes for safety of cyclists, pedestrians and other vulnerable road users (VRU), statutes for protection of children during commute, robust and scientific accident investigation and data collection, stringent punishment for faulty road design and engineering, transparent, centralised and efficient driver’s licensing system, mandatory safe driving training for all, strict regulation of Heavy Motor Vehicles (HMV’s), stringent punishment for drunk-driving and over-speeding,
violation of helmet and seat-belt laws.

Notably, as per National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Law Commission of India, Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority and Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2013, there is one road accident death every four minutes which leads to 377 deaths every day, which is equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every day.

About 12.02 lakhs people were seriously injured or disabled in road accidents in the country in the past 10 years. One out of every four road accident death happens on
a two wheeler. Ironically, India has about one per cent of the world's vehicle
but accounts for about 10 per cent of world's road accidents.