: The wait for a new and stronger legislation for road safety has grown longer as the Road Transport and Safety Bill, 2015 — the third version of the proposed legislation — could not be tabled during the Budget Session of Parliament.
Activists and experts believe that some proposals featuring in the draft of the Bill are needed in the Capital urgently as Delhi accounts for the highest number of road deaths than any other city in the country.
Key among these, they say, are enhanced penalties for all major violations, electronic enforcement and fixing responsibilities of poorly designed roads, which continue to take lives even when the driver isn’t at fault.
Police officers decline to comment on the specific provisions of the law but agree that a law much stronger than the existing Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 is the need of the hour and prosecutions under the old law may not be enough to impose better driver behaviour or make city roads safer.
Peeyush Tewari from Save Life Foundation, an NGO working for the cause, said discipline was missing on city roads. This is why despite recent drives initiated by the Traffic Police to crack down on errant drivers, especially drunk drivers, road fatalities have not come down.
“This is where the bill comes into the picture. A study conducted by IIT-Delhi, which installed cameras for an experiment, showed that there were 14 crore violations at the ITO junction in a month. This is how unruly the drivers in the city are. Each violation could lead to a potential accident, that’s how vulnerable we are. If we keep delaying the new law, we are giving them a free run,” said Mr. Tewari.
He said the provisions of the bill as far as the fine amounts were concerned have been diluted and feared that if revised further downwards, would not be as effective as it was envisaged to be when a renewed debate on improved road safety law started after a road accident in Delhi, that of former Union Minister Gopinath Munde in 2014.
Elucidating the camera example further, Mr. Tewari also highlighted how electronic enforcement was the need of the hour. His words found echo in those of Muktesh Chander, the former head of Delhi Traffic Police, who moved out to take over As Director General of Police, Goa on April 1.
A slightly differing viewpoint on the subject of electronic enforcement as a stronger deterrence vis-à-vis manual challaning came from Sewa Ram, associate professor at the Department of Transport Planning, School of Planning and Architecture (SPA).
Citing his institute’s studies, Mr. Ram said the sight of policemen at a junction has been found to have a psychological effect on drivers and prevents them from jumping signals or speeding.
Driver behaviour aside, road designs have been another major cause of concern for road safety in Delhi.
According to the multiple drafts of the bill available on the public domain, it is the 2015 version of the draft that puts the onus on the authority or contractor responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of the safety standards of the road.
The builders must follow design, construction and maintenance standards, as determined by the National Authority to ensure that no death, injury or damage is caused to users as a result of failure to adhere to such safety standards.
Delhi has several roads where sharp bends and the resultant reduced width have caused accidents.
An interesting development came last November when a court directed the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to pay Rs. 5 lakh as compensation to the family of a man who died six years ago on the Dwarka-Palm flyover.
What is significant is that the court called it a “man-made urban death trap”.
While Mr. Tewari adds that the proposed law also makes contractors liable and has sought to introduce penal provisions in case of accidents if the contractor is found at fault, the draft bills The Hindu has gone through do not mention the contractors but instead the authorities who roped them in or are responsible for the maintenance.
“The proposed draft of the new Road Safety bill says that the enforcing authority may bring an action for failure to maintain a road against the designated authority if the persons responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of the road have not exercised due care to secure the safety circumstances as was reasonably required in the part of the road to which the action relates to,” it reads.
It is here that Mr. Ram wants the civic agencies maintaining the roads to be held accountable as well for providing speed breakers or not providing adequate warning signage.
Study by IIT-Delhi revealed there were
14 crore violations
at the ITO junction
in a month
