New Road Traffic Act

The Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Shri Nitin Gadkari on Monday, September 1, announced that a new Road Traffic Act will be brought in practice from coming winter session of parliament. This new act will replace the already established Motor Vehicles Act of 1988.

To introduce with the reason of putting the new Road Traffic Act in force, the Minister explained, “Every year around 1,38,000 people are killed in road accidents, the total social cost of which is estimated to be around Rs.1 Lakh Crore. Moreover, 63 % of the road crash deaths occur on National and State Highways.”

He further added, “The biggest problem faced in urban areas in addition to road safety is unprecedented growth of vehicles leading to traffic congestion and increasing road traffic violations”.

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According to the ministry, this new Road Traffic Act will have very similar features to the best practices of developed countries like USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, Singapore and UK. The draft of the proposed Act has almost been reached to its final stage and will be available very soon.

The Minister also said, “Due to lack of effective road engineering, faulty DPRs were made leading to increasing road accidents and fatalities. There is need to fix accountability at the highest level for such large number of accidents in the country”.

This is not the first time that the act under traffic has undergone changes; it has already got altered, twice, since its enactment in 1914.

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