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-   -   Decoding the proposed Road Transport & Safety Bill, 2015 (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/161189-decoding-proposed-road-transport-safety-bill-2015-a.html)

India's governing laws for motorized transport was last amended in the year 1988 and came into force in May 1989. That is nearly about 26 years ago. The amendments came into force at a time when a car would be a status symbol and not a necessity as it nearly is in today's time. Congestion has increased due considerably higher number of car sales since the year 2000. To put things in perspective nearly half a million of cars were added in the months of January and February alone which I believe would be a far fetched figure to achieve back in the day.

With the rising number of cars, came higher levels of irresponsibility from road users. The offence for jumping a Red traffic light is merely Rs. 100/- which must have been a handsome amount to pay in 1988. Considering this, the present government presented ROAD TRANSPORT AND SAFETY BILL 2015. The act when enforced will repeal all provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.


Highlights:

- The government and allied agencies seem to have taken a huge chunk of this act by looking at what is already in force in developed nations.

- On the whole, the fines in general seem to have gone up many times vis-a-vis MVA 1988. A traffic light violation that would set you back by Rs. 100/- will now be Rs. 500/- for the first offence, Rs. 1,000/- for the second and Rs. 1,500/- combined with a month's suspension of license for the third.

- Imprisonment tenures have been increased and clauses for community service have been introduced for various offences. The chances of having your driving license suspended or in the worst case your vehicle permit is high.

- A slew of new regulations for example, driving against the flow of traffic, possessing multiple driving licenses, delivering a vehicle without registration, enforcement of safety gear, seating of children, introduction of a penalty points based system, etc.

- Clear definition of present day transport categories, example, a technology aggregator like Uber has been defined clearly in the act:

- Drinking and driving laws are stronger. The allowable alcohol limit is now reduced to 20mg/100ml of blood as against 30mg/100ml in the past. A first time offence invites a whooping Rs. 10,000/- in fine and a license suspension of 6 months. A repeat offence will invite double the penalty with an imprisonment of one month to six months and warrant a suspension of your driving license for a complete year.

- The new act is not restricted to road users, it extends to manufacturers as well as road construction authorities/contractors. Yes, the much awaited lemon law is here. I am assuming we'll soon have "ambulance chasers" too.

- A road accident caused by improper construction or safety standard of a road will invite a penalty to the road manufacturer as well.

I prepared an entire worksheet from the draft act in presentable excel format. Luckily for me, my previous work for listing out offences and applicable fine ( Thread link. ) was available. I simply added another worksheet so you can tell the difference in effort in framing the previous and the current one.


Establishment of National Road Safety and Vehicle Regulation Authority of India

- This authority seems to be at the heart of the Road Transport and Safety bill.

- I am no lawyer to understand this, but by the looks of it, this body will take over all functions of the RTA (Regional Transport Authority) as was announced by the government: Thread link.

- This body will apparently be whole and sole responsible for framing statutory requirements to be followed by manufacturers to laying out rules and regulations for altering a vehicle. It will have sufficient powers to:

Quoting their functions verbatim from the act:

What's not covered:

- We already know how our authorities fail to enforce rules on the road. At best, most traffic policemen are busy on what they call "bandobast" duty. The other times when you see traffic policemen out on the road is when they have to meet revenue targets for the month. These are usually carried out in the last week of each month with a special drive for specific type of offences. The newspapers carry an article the following day on how much money was made and randomly a street vendor will setup a helmet shop on a part of the road selling substandard plastic helmets which won't protect you from a flying stone, let alone a crash.

- Law makers are quite often law breakers, there should have been a special provision to prosecute them.

- In this age of DVRs, video as well as photo evidences should suffice for levying a penalty.

- Enforcement of traffic laws should be automated, a traffic cop jumping in front of a running car to catch hold of an offender is not wise.

- Separate clauses should also have been laid out to list responsibilities of the enforcement agencies when a vehicle is impounded. A dear friend's truck was once impounded in Bombay and the inspector's clear instructions were: Remove battery, tyres, electrical equipment, spares, accessories from the vehicle as it was NOT their responsibility if they were stolen from the impound yard!

- It is easy to put up no parking signs in crowded areas, but effort also has to be made to ensure there are community parking spaces created even if they come at a cost.

- The problem of untrained drivers hitting our streets is not uncommon. This problem could have been better addressed with stricter norms before issuing out driving licenses. At the moment, this job is handled by a cartel of motor driving schools.

There's stiff resistance from several states to the new act in the current form. They see it as a way to take away their autonomy in the transport sector. States want to keep permits, taxation and licenses in their ambit . They're also opposed to removal of the clause that allows States to have monopoly on transport ( eg no private buses are allowed in City limits in Bangalore). State transport unions have already made their resistance clear.

The law in it's current form was hastily prepared after the unfortunate demise of Gopinath Munde. It won't see the light of the day given that the current government has no majority in the Rajya sabha. They're already finding it hard to pass other bills such as the insurance and the land ordinance bills, so this one will remain on the shelf for a while.

It is high time we should have a centralized authority to manage the entire matters pertinent to the motor vehicles piling on Indian roads. The various state governments have different rules and regulations which creates lot of nuisance and confusion to the general public especially one travel across states and , or relocates to another state. I am unable to digest the specific requirement of re-registration of a car when a person shifts from one state to other. Of course he should be charged whatever is the difference of tax amount applicable to that particular state, but charging the full tax amount is highly illogical.The existing system create lot of red tapism and waste of precious man hours in running from one office to other.

Thank you Moralfibre for this thread.

Recently we have been seeing a few threads on related topics being posted on T-BHP. These new rules look promising, however there seems to be a long wait for the good times to finally come. But my question is how beneficial is this going to be for a common law abiding motorist on the road? I for example will usually have to shift to a new city every 2-3 years, and the biggest worry for any Out of State shifting is getting the RTA formalities completed. It is a general trend for Indian cops to target cars with out of state number plates and this will at minimum take 2-3 months to get done with. Second is the huge amount of road tax that we will have to pay to the new RTA. Yes, there are rules to get a refund from the earlier RTA but that is a different story altogether. :Frustrati

I hope that the new rules will consider these issues faced by commoners and will do something to help us get through these easily.

Yes. the new draft takes care of this as i see. Under Sec 84, page 96, it says that it will be a "Unified" vehicle registration system, the registration fee will be set in consultation with center and states and can be paid electronically. All existing vehicles will have to migrate to the new unified system.

The burden for taxation and tax distribution is left to the new authority as per Sec 85. The individual is not concerned with how much is this state tax or that state tax.

Under Sec 87, point no. 5, the registration will be valid and effective throughout India which means you do not have to re-register your vehicle every time you change state.

Under Sec 96, the rules for transfer to other place or change of address are mentioned. The person has 90 days to intimate to the new authority about the change of address so that the new address is updated in the unified new system. Under point no 4. it is clearly mentioned that the new system enables electronic adjustment and reconciliation of any taxes paid or due to any state government or local authority.

Once interesting clause Under Sec 89 is - During registration of the vehicle each application has to fulfill the condition that "Provided that every application shall be accompanied with proof of an operating bank account in the name of the applicant". On the one hand this will make whole transaction electronic and transparent, refunds and adjustments quick and easy and on the other, it will greatly compliment the PMJDY as all the people who buy vehicles in rural areas will now have to have a bank account if they want to get the vehicle registered.

So if the bill gets approved in this session of the parliament then by 2018 we all will have migrated to the unified system with probably a new vehicle registration number. :)

My input/Suggestion.

Third Party insurance should be made a part of the registration . and one time 15 year premium should be collected along with the registration. After that, getting a comprehensive policy will be left optional. That ways, we will not have uninsured vehicles plying on roads and prevent many victims from being denied compensation just because the offender had no insurance and didn't have money to pay as damages.

While I'd wholeheartedly support the government if these rules are implemented, I'm not sure if this is going to really work. Increased fines would just mean increased corruption. People who would get away paying a Rs. 100 "fine" before would now have to shell out at least twice that amount to avoid the actual fine. The money won't reach the government. However, it will make people fall in line at least to avoid paying bribes.

While this is true to a large extent, we also are seeing a move towards the use of technology to enforce traffic rules. I personally had an experience recently. I got a ticket from Mysore traffic police for being over speed limit. I was not stopped at the time and the ticket came to my address in Bangalore a week later. When doing some research on how to pay, I found something interesting. Mysore had recently inaugurated a system where the motorist will not be stopped. If a violation is seen, it is just captured and passed to the central enforcement agency. They send a ticket to the address as per rto records. No chance of corruption there. Typically within a state all RTO's are linked ( at least it is in KA). Of course for other states regn this may not work. Also will not work of your address is not up to date. But that is an offense in itself. In any case at some point it will catch up with you.

So these stricter penalties and automated enforcement can definitely help make the driving community more disciplined. Not that i am an indisciplined driver, but after the Mysore incident, I will be doubly cautious when passing through Mysore. Same is the case in Kerala where there are speed cams in a lot of places. Now people will not have an issue paying fine. But if it is increased steeply and the threat of license being canceled becomes real, it will definitely pinch.

This is heartening. This is how things should be and gives us a lot of hope. I am from KA and it's good to know that it's been implemented. I'll be even more careful on my next visit :)

But the question is, how did you even manage to go over speed limit between Bangalore and Mysore!?:Shockked:

It was not between Bangalore-Mysore. It was within Mysore City. Which brings me to another point. I got the ticket, but there was no mention of the speed limit in the area where i was flagged and also the speed I was doing. My understanding is that speed limit is 60 kmph within Mysore (and also Bangalore). Pretty sure I was not beyond 60. Which means the expected limit in that section was lower.

So while it is a welcome move to make penalties much more stiffer, as a motorist it should be unambiguously clear to me what is the default speed limit, exceptions to this , where I can park, where I can/cannot take a U turn etc.

OT: Although the Bangalore Mysore route is much maligned for its humps and traffic, there are plenty of sections where you pretty much can do what ever speed you want. In fact majority of the folks driving on this road will be over the allowed limit (which if I am not mistaken is 80 kmph):)

@Rajeevraj: town limits are typically 40 or lower (depending on?). You probably missed a board obscured by plantation or covered by bills.

Does this 3 year period looks quite long to implement this? I agree, lot of formalities are to be completed. And there may be resistances from several states also.:eek: