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-   -   Govt hastens process for setting up board for road safety (10yrs in Jail for...) (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/64051-govt-hastens-process-setting-up-board-road-safety-10yrs-jail-3.html)

There are umpteen number of laws but the point is implementation of these laws. We certainly don't need a law but a measure to be able to implement the existing laws. As long as people are able to circumvent the laws there is no point of them being there in our system!!

If this becomes a law (10 yr RI & NBW), I will seriously consider getting an in car camera. How else does one prove his/her innocence where "bigger vehicle is always at fault"?

In a lighter vein, this is not true when a bus or a truck comes and rams into your car and messes up the bodywork. Moral of the story is you will always lose! All the more reason to master the art of defensive driving in India. And regardless of right and wrong, I don't want to have anyone's death in an accident I have caused, on my conscience.

How can you cause an accident? By definition, the term accident conveys a lack of intention on the party(ies) involved in it.

So, for being involved in an accident which caused someone's death, one gets 10 years under the proposed new law, whether or not there was any act of commission (intentional wrongdoing - driving drunk) or omission (negligence - driving without licence) on the part of the driver.

This approach is completely ridiculous.

I think I almost got imprisoned for 10 years today.

While crusing on a flyover at around 85-90km\hr,on Nh-1(It was a 4 lane flyover) I tried to get ahead of a truck going on the left,as the Descent began,I notice a Rickshaw with two people and its rider crawling towards me.
I was like:Shockked:,dont know how i managed to squeeze my car in between the truck and rickshaw.

God forbid if I would have hit the rickshaw,only I would have been blamed:deadhorse

Actually what we need are not new laws but effective implementation of existing ones and creating awareness among all road users.

Difficult task in our social set up, but not impossible

Our government sets up the new laws but their implementation is done after around 5-6 years. then now what is the advantage of these laws ??
These laws will be definitely outdated when they will be effectively implemented after around 5-6 years.

The proposed law applies only when there is an act of ommission or commission and not for every accident.

Being unintentional doesnt mean that you cant cause something.

Bird Brains get to work again.
WOOOOW what an idea.
And all these from the same people who TILL THIS DATE couldn't enforce basic driving etiquettes like no signal jumping and driving in opposite direction.

Why can't these pot-heads try these simple things first?
Show me a cop who stopped a cabbie who drove on the wrong side of the divider! I bet you can't.
Show me a cop who asks you to drive on the wrong side of the divider. I'll show you plenty in Bangalore.

What we need is EDUCATION.

:(

My Story from today evening - 2 uncles on a scooter heading on the wrong side of the divider. I stop right in front of them and dont give way. They apologize and go past me.
Hardly move 2 inches, when another idiot on a bike sees me coming, and still continues to come towards me. I stop in front of him, and he tries to squeeze through the half a metre gap between my car and the divider. He stops by the window, smiling sheepishly when he sees me glaring and nicely says "sorry sir, I thought I would just go through here and cut to the left", and this at what I think is the most dangerous junction in the whole of chennai. Gave him a mouthful, told him not to die under my car at that stupid junction, and drove away.

My moral from today evening - Education for these guys? Not worth it. Bring on the baseball bats. :deadhorse

In a country where people make all kinds of mistakes on the road, and behave as if the road belonged to their ancestors from the stone age, then fight with you as if they have a license for committing mistakes, its very very very difficult to bring about any kind of change in driving etiquette. We see cops assigned to a busy junction to handle traffic only to find them comfortably sleeping inside their hyundai accents and toyota qualis'. How many times have I seen cops on their bikes riding on the wrong side of the road, and other cops bullying cars on the roads with their tata sumos. Hell my poor verna almost got thrashed by a cop driving a sumo the other day.
Sorry to offend all the patriots out there, but lets face it - no longer is it a good enough excuse to say "this is india, this is how it will work". As highlighted by the 3 "very"s before the difficult in my previous sentence, nothing will improve unless extremly strict rules and laws are passed, and more importantly these have to be implemented ruthlessly.
In Singapore, the most important component in a license test is a check to see if you are aware of your blind spot. Would such a test be applicable in India? Hell half the cars have their RVMs closed, and the other half dont even have one at all. The entire road is like a blind spot for such drivers. For how much longer wll people keep using their horns instead of the brakes in the car or the brain in their head?
Ah.. I give up!

I can give you a long list. An example easy to understand is by being on the cell phone when driving. It is certainly not your intention to cause an accident when you do this, but if this causes an accident, haven't you caused it? Or will you say the cell phone did it?? And on a philosophical note, there are no accidents in life...but that is OT, and I can produce the long list without resort to that line of thought.
You kill someone in an accident, and even if the other person was the party at fault, a developed conscience will not allow you to sleep at night, staring at the question - is there anything I could have done to avoid this? And the better a driver you are, the more valid answers you will find to that one. Being in that situation is my abiding nightmare on Indian roads for decades, and has kept me accident free till now.

whatever be it, if the basic idea is to bring in discipline among road users in India, then I would say this is an escapist rule.

Basically the minimal things like jumping the signal, crossing yellow lines, overtaking from wrongs sides, line cutting, mobile usage and the like should be heavily fined. T hiss brings in the first level of discipline among the users. With these it is highly unlikely that any fatalities gets committed. But accidents do occur.

But again it is completely foolish to believe that the death is caused by a drivers mistake alone, what happens if a jaywalker jumps on the NH, what happens if a two wheeler cuts across the line in the NH? If the law is blind in prosecuting without even correcting the basic things - my comment is we have just gone too far.

Rules must be tough for compliance, agreed. But are we enforcing the culture rightly?

On a lighter vein, Can the law prosecute pedestrians who cross the road negligently and throw safety to the winds?
Can they prosecute the cyclist or 2 wheeler who jumps in out of nowhere and causes the 4 wheeler to crash, putting themselves and the car driver in danger?
Instead why not educate people more about safety,teach them to anticipate accidents while they drive,curb drunken driving and driving under influence?
Why not make the license process more stringent?
Make seperate lanes for different kinds of traffic?
Prevent truckers from slogging the rightmost lane.Punish them stringently if they do so.
Soberness test on highways for all highway drivers at some check points(To filter sleepy/non alert drivers).Provide them caffeine pills/strong coffee.
It is easy to make a new law.But there is scope for innocent people to be convicted for no fault of theirs.I think this law is just bovine excreta!!

@Sawyer
1. Agree with your point but punishment out of proportion to intention and punishment (incarceration without bail) without proving that you are guilty is what I am agitated about.

2. Check this link for definition of Rash and Negligent driving as viewed by cops today. Was news to me that use of hand free phones / systems also invites a fine. To carry such thinking forward - Listening to radio talk show or talking with passengers is not distraction?
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifti...tml#post938655

I agree that this is not right. But let us first get agitated about all such laws that are anti human rights, including ones that exist in India today before getting worked up about what is a recommendation to add one to that list.
And do what it takes to earn the right to be heard about the one that is merely a proposal.