SC concerned over growing rash driving cases, urges stricter punishment

“The poor feel that their lives are not safe, the pedestrians think of uncertainty and the civilized persons drive in constant fear but still apprehensive about the obnoxious attitude of the people who project themselves as ‘larger than life’. In such obtaining circumstances, we are bound to observe that the lawmakers should scrutinize, re-look and re-visit the sentencing policy in Section 304A, IPC. We say so with immense anguish,” said the court.

It is noted that India has a disreputable record of road accidents and there was a growing nonchalant attitude among the drivers which required to be curbed.

“This court has been constantly noticing the increase in number of road accidents and has also noticed how the vehicle drivers have been totally rash and negligent. It seems to us that driving in a drunken state, in a rash and negligent manner or driving with youthful adventurous enthusiasm as if there are no traffic rules or no discipline of law has come to the centrestage,” it said.

The court stated that a man with the means has, in possibility, graduated himself to harbour the idea that he can escape from the substantive sentence by payment of compensation. Neither the law nor the court, the bench maintained, should get oblivious of the fact that in such accidents precious lives are lost and the survivors are crippled for life.

“Such developing of notions is a dangerous phenomenon in an orderly society. Young age cannot be a plea to be accepted in all circumstances. Life to the poor or the impecunious is as worth living for as it is to the rich and the luxuriously temperamental,” it said.

The court said this as it enhanced the jail term of a convict from 24 days to six months. Saurabh Bakshi’s punishment was reduced from one year in jail to 24 days, already undergone during the trial, by the the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Bakshi was convicted for causing death of two persons by rash and negligent driving of a motor vehicle in June 2007.