Tamil Nadu must rethink stand on road safety bill
Save LIFE voluntary organisation is involved in preparing Road Transport and Safety Bill
By : k. karthikeyan
Update: 2014-11-12 06:41 GMT
Chennai: A road safety think-tank involved in preparation of the Road Transport and Safety Bill (RTSB) has advised Tamil Nadu to rethink its stand on the proposed bill believed to have stringent safety clauses.Mr Piyush Tewari, CEO and founder of SaveLIFE foundation, a voluntary organisation that held consultations with 100 stakeholders covering 10 states before providing its inputs to the Centre for RTSB, said the bill does not infringe on state rights, as apprehended by Tamil Nadu, the only state to oppose it in the country.
Section 86 of the RTSB Bill was specifically incorporated to protect states’ rights, Mr Tewari, who quit a plum MNC job and launched SaveLIFE after three in his family succumbed to road accidents in a year in 2007, told Deccan Chronicle during his visit to the city to muster support for the bill. “The national authority proposed in the RTSB and which Tamil Nadu stoutly opposes will only play an advisory role and only the states will continue to issue licenses, permits, collect fees and levy penalty. The authority will only frame the guidelines and fix the penalty,” Mr Tewari reasoned, suggesting partial privatisation of the issue of licence on the lines of Passport Seva Kendra to ensure transparency and tighten the rules for issue of license.
The CEO who held a few consultations with many senior TN bureaucrats, however, appreciated TN for being reportedly open to technological intervention in transport sector, fixing accountability on contractors and road engineers for faulty road designs causing death and optimisation of child safety in the bill. According to him, automobile majors, truck owners and RTOs were the only section opposing and stalling the bill.
“A study by Transparency International puts the volume of bribe collected on the country’s highways at '24,000 crore. Which RTO would want to support the RTSB, which also fixes accountability on truck owners and not merely the crew for accidents,” Mr Tewari reasoned. Above all, the new bill stipulated mandatory crash testing, which, no automobile manufacturer wants to do for Indian vehicle market that does not conform to any of the UN safety standards, he alleged, claiming that all but one automobile major abstained from consultations held to popularise RTSB.