Since the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Act 2019 came into force, news reports trickled in daily with three parts to them each time: The mention of an offence (or multiple) under the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Act 2019, a brief mention of the profession of the culprit, and the final substantial fine
Offences range from not possessing the correct documents to not wearing a helmet, a complete list of which is available here. What has made news, however, are the exacting fines being levied upon those who commit multiple offences, or extreme levels of a single offence.
For the ordinary commuter, many of whom drive with expired or nonexistent insurance, the new fines were sufficient to drive a surge in the number of people seeking new insurance schemes or to renew their old ones, according to reports.
But, there are always those who like to live dangerously. If the cost for not having insurance has been bumped up to Rs 2,000 (a 2x increase), the cost of committing multiple offences at once is several times that.
A Delhi man, in the early days of the new rules, attracted a fine of Rs 23,000, levied for the combination of driving without a license (Rs 5,000), driving without insurance (Rs 2,000), violating pollution norms (Rs 10,000), driving without a helmet (Rs 1,000) and driving without a Registration Certificate (Rs 5,000).
To reiterate, Rs 23,000 is the combined fine for driving without any documents whatsoever. The receipt of the fine that the Delhi man received was widely shared for being a ‘record’ amount.
This was soon matched by a Gurugram man, who surrendered his scooter the police after receiving a Rs 23,000 fine. Like many, the value of his vehicle was less than the cost of the fines he would incur by driving it.
In Rajasthan, a heavy-duty truck driver made history by receiving the heaviest fine imposed under the MVA to date, according to ANI, with a whopping Rs 1.41 lakh fine for overloading his vehicle. For the curious, the penalty for overloading is Rs 20,000 plus Rs 2,000 per extra tonne, a more than tenfold increase from the previous amount.
One would assume that this was the limit. But another truck driver, this time from Delhi, topped that on September 12, paying over two lakh rupees for 10 violations, including for overloading his truck by 18 tonnes, driving without a license, insurance papers, pollution certificate, seatbelt or permit. The driver was fined Rs 56,000 for overloading and Rs 70,000 for other traffic violations, with the owner of the truck paying the total amount.
The frustration by one Delhi resident, who was fined Rs 16,000 for drunk driving, driving without a helmet or RC book, saw the person set fire to his vehicle while it was being impounded, claiming that the bike was worth less than the fine.
Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari was proud to admit that he too had been fined for speeding on the Mumbai Sealink (not specifying whether this was before or after the new rules took place, the old fine for speeding was Rs 400, the new one goes up to Rs 2,000).
If this was of any consolation to those who have been fined, IPS Officer Navdeep Virk tweeted an infographic of fines in Singapore and Hong Kong to show how much higher the amounts were in other countries.
With nearly 1.48 lakh road deaths in 2018, India has long been a dangerous place to drive. The argument made in favour of the fines is that they will dis-incentivize risky behaviour on the roads and help cut down the casualty count (which is many times bigger than what India suffered in the 1965, 1971 and 1998 wars combined). A 2001 study found that a large increase in traffic fines in 1998 (tenfold in many cases) in Brazil reduced accident-related emergency room visits by 33 per cent.
The large fines have, nonetheless, impacted many common people, from auto drivers to truck drivers, for many of whom the amounts may prove unpayable. In Bihar, an auto driver was fined for driving without wearing his seat belt despite autos not coming equipped with one. Although, in October 2018, it was reported that the government was planning to issue a notification to make it mandatory for auto rickshaws to have seatbelts from October 2019.
States like Gujarat, West Bengal, and Telangana have decided to slash the rates, while Kerala has chosen to delay the imposition of the new fines until the Centre offers a clarification (the state is also seeking a reduction in the fine amounts).