Higher fines will not lead to reduction in fatal accidents, say road safety experts
India accounts for more than 11 per cent of total global road accidents. It is a signatory to the UN declaration on halving the number of road accidents by 2030.
The amended Section 184 of the Motor Vehicles Act redefines dangerous driving as “a manner of driving which causes a sense of alarm or distress to the occupants of a vehicle, other road users and persons near roads.” (Express File Photo) While delivering a lecture during a recent seminar organised by the International Road Federation (IRF) in Delhi, the president of the Institute of Road Traffic Education (IRTE) said the traffic police in the National Capital Region (NCR) focus on fining offenders for not carrying documents like driving licences and pollution control certificates but do little to curb ‘moving violations’, such as speeding and rash driving.
“What the traffic police is enforcing today is an easy approach rather than regulating traffic and checking moving traffic violations,” said IRTE president Dr Rohit Baluja.
According to Baluja, the Supreme Court in 2017 appointed a committee on road safety and directed police departments across India to classify offences such as speeding, red light jumping, mobile phone usage, and wrong-side driving under the category of dangerous driving and to increase the fines. Taking the apex court’s orders into consideration, the Delhi Traffic Police collected Rs 64.8 crore in traffic fines that year. The number of road accident fatalities in 2017 was 1,584. In 2021, the traffic police collected Rs 493 crore in fines but the number of road accidents came down to 1,230.
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