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New Motor Vehicles Bill seeks to make roads safer

Last Updated 19 August 2016, 18:16 IST

Change might be just round the corner for India’s killer roads as Minister for the Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari introduced the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill 2016 on August 9 in the Lok Sabha. The bill is an attempt to modify India’s 30-year-old Motor Vehicle Act (MVA), 1988, which was legislated at a time when the country was starting to see economic reform and encouraged the growth of motor vehicles.

However, in the last decade or so, road safety has become a serious issue. The MVA is in desperate need for reform, and the Government of India had made a number of attempts to change this legislation, without success.

Over a million people die in road traffic crashes world over each year. India accounts for more than a tenth of those deaths, even though it accounts for barely 2% of the global motor vehicle share, making it the worst performing country in the world in the terms of road traffic deaths. On an average, one person dies on Indian roads every four minutes.

According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), 54.1% of victims are 15 to 34 years of age, translating into huge social and economic losses. Studies show that India loses 4-5% of its GDP each year owing to road traffic crashes.

Clearly, immediate interventions are necessary to make our roads safer. While the enforcement of helmets, seatbelts and other traditional preventive strategies are helpful, the numbers suggest that in urban areas, the majority of fatalities are that of pedestrians and cyclists.

This means we have been going about this the wrong way. We have been concentrating on making vehicles safer and, as a result, we have made people more vulnerable. We need sustainable transport and safer streets for all road users, especially for those walking and cycling.

The amended MVA Bill has a significant focus on safety. This step is in keeping with India’s commitment at the 2015 Brasilia Declaration to bring down road traffic deaths by 50% by 2020 as part of the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety. If passed, the amended legislation is expected to help reduce road traffic fatalities by looking at the issue of road safety and transportation in a comprehensive manner.

The amended MVA will focus on people, and not just vehicles. State and city governments will be empowered to enforce policies that provide for the safety of children and vulnerable road users, like cyclists and pedestrians, and also enhance safety in public spaces. In addition, recognising the correlation between public transport and road safety, provisions are being made to encourage an increase in permits for stage carriage and contract carriage services in cities.

This will complement the existing public transport networks in cities that have them, and facilitate a rise in public transport services in smaller cities. The bill also recognises the disruptive approach to mobility and lays down provisions for the fast growing sector of vehicle aggregation.

The amendment to the MVA proposes stronger enforcement and stricter penalties, which will act as a deterrent to rash driving. Hefty fines have been included for drunk-driving, over-speeding, under-age driving and driving without a licence. A new points-based system will be established, with increasing fines for repeated offences.

There will also be penalties like imprisonment, impounding of vehicles and cancellation of licences, in addition to fines, depending on the severity of the offence. The bill also proposes to make guardians and/or owners liable in case of traffic crashes involving minors driving motor vehicles.

The ministry has also included the use of technology to improve operations, enforcement and governance of road transport. In urban areas, electronic enforcement has been recommended, especially in high density areas.

Licences and permits will be issued and recorded via a centralised database in order to streamline the process and make mobility between states easier.

Vehicle testing centres

Provisions have been made to leverage the capacity of the private sector in road safety with provisions for vehicle testing centres based on the public-private partnership (PPP) model. On the manufacturing side, the government aims to make use of new technologies in alternative, cleaner fuels, vehicle design and retrofitting to reduce harmful emissions.

It has been seen from global research that countries that have seen significant improvements in road safety have had a strong enabling legislation. The MoRTH had earlier attempted to bring in a new legislation – Road Transport & Safety Bill – that was put for public comments in August 2014 but could not be tabled in Parliament due to varied reasons including the perception that it was too ‘top down’ and did not have enough buy-in from the individual state authorities. 

However, as the amendments get discussed in Parliament, experts are hopeful that it is soon passed into law. The current bill was drafted following recommendations involving 18 transport ministers from different states. The group, headed by Rajasthan Transport Minister Yunus Khan, submitted three interim reports to the MoRTH which formed the basis of the amendments.

Road traffic crashes are now globally recognised as an epidemic and India cannot afford a business-as-usual attitude towards road safety. We need to develop a ‘vision zero’ approach which basically signifies that each life matters and therefore, it needs strategic policies that put people first so that our roads are no longer the most dangerous in the world. It is expected that the amended MVA would trigger a systemic change towards the vision zero approach as India can’t afford to lose any more lives to road traffic crashes. 

(The writer is Director-Integrated Transport, WRI India)

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(Published 19 August 2016, 18:16 IST)

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