Indian Economy News

Five months since new Motor Vehicles Act, road accidents come down by 10 per cent

  • IBEF
  • March 17, 2020

According to Union minister of road transport and highways, Mr Nitin Gadkari, five months since the new Motor Vehicles Act, state like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Chandigarh witnessed around 12-14 per cent decrease in road accidents.

The data was revealed from 12 states and union territories in the Rajya Sabha by the minister and comparison was on the rate of accidents with that five months before September 2019, when manifold increase in penalties on violation of traffic rules provided by the Act, was enforced.

Among other states, Delhi and Haryana showed a decrease of 1.8 percent and 1 percent accidents between September 2019 till January 2020, whereas accidents in Assam and Kerala increased by 7.2 percent and 4.9 percent respectively during the same months.

There was reduction in accidents by 5.4 per cent, 4.7 per cent, 6.4 per cent and 3.4 per cent respectively in states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur.

In 2018, Indian roads witnessed 4,67,044 accidents that claimed lives of over 1.5 lakh people, as per the data from the ministry of road transport and highways.

India ranks first in the number of road accident deaths across the 199 countries reported in the World Road Statistics, 2018 followed by China and US. As per the WHO Global Report on Road Safety 2018, India accounts for almost 11 per cent of the accident related deaths in the World.

It is expected that the introduction of the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 will bring down the scale of road accidents in India, by way of heavy penalties for violating traffic rules.

Among major changes, the fine for drunken driving has been increased from Rs 2,000 (US$ 28.61) to Rs 10,000 (US$ 143.08) while driving without the seat belt now incurs a fine of Rs 1,000 (US$ 14.30) as against Rs 100 (US$ 1.43) levied previously. Cab aggregators can now be fined up to Rs 1 lakh (US$ 1430.8) for violation of licensing rules.

Speeding or racing can now draw a fine of Rs 5,000 (US$ 71.51), while overloading of two-wheelers has seen 20 times jump in penalty at Rs 20,000 (US$ 286.16), including disqualification of driver’s license for three months.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

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