Do Parents Understand the consequences UNDERAGE DRIVING?

With the continuous progress in the road infrastructure, we have a strong road network in the entire country now. More and more highways, state ways and rural roads are coming up in every state. The rural areas consisting of villages, fields and pasture lands are giving way to the highways that cut across the villages at times and mostly pass close to them. This has caused the lifestyles of the rural population to change with more vehicles being purchased and an increase in everyday mobility from the village to the city for work. The city dwellers too are witnessing the same changes with newer roads and huge flyovers cutting across their markets and living spaces. Sure enough, life has become easier and faster. Yet the almost sudden road infrastructure growth has catalyzed people’s aspirations, auto sales, lifestyles and mindsets in a big way. The rich buy faster and sleeker cars. SUVs and motorbikes are not a luxury any more for the middle class. Every teenager aspires to be a rider.

With such drastic changes at every level, accidents specifically among the youth are increasing. The Global Status Road Safety Report and the multiple and exhaustive reports of the World Health Organisation tell us 5 to 29 years of young people die on roads due to multiple reasons, one most common being speed. Most gruesome deaths happen due to underage driving by kids that come from the rich, the middle and the poor class. The Global Report lists reasons for accidents that are fatal or have grievous, life-limiting injuries. Before we go on to understand the law about underage driving, it would be wise to understand the reasons leading to accidents. Young people love speed and are not able to manage speed if they are underage, unlicensed drivers. Underage teens do indulge in drink and driving and drug use at times and they are careless about seat belts and helmets. Distracted driving is common in teens. All these reasons are applicable to adult youth and even middle age groups too.

Now to come back to the vital question of AGE and UNDER AGE. India’s recently amended Motor Vehicle Act 2019 emphasizes underage driving and punishments for it in new legal terms. Section 199 A of the Motor Vehicle Act 2019 specifies the law in terms of the responsibility of the parents. It says the parent or the owner of the vehicle being driven by an underage child is liable to be jailed which may extend to 3 years along with a fine of 25, 000/- rupees. It further says that such an underage driver will not be permitted to obtain a license till 25 years of age. Now the new laws as stipulated in the MVA are really scary and drastic. A sad fact is in India the laws come into existence yet their applicability remains very low and many times compromised. It is a very sad state of affairs for how can we forget the risk of dangerous and distracted driving when we allow our children under 18 years to drive? The result of accidents by underage drivers is predictably tragic for the child driver, the occupants in the car, and mostly friends of the car driver's child. Again such accidents are the gruesome cause of killing or hurting other vehicle drivers, pedestrians and poor people sleeping on the side walkways.

The city of Jaipur witnessed such horrendous cases of underage driving recently, resulting in deaths. On 7th February 2023, a 12thclass teenage driver from an elite school’s senior class was racing his car with other four friends in other cars in the wee hours of 3.30 am on the ring road of Jaipur city. After losing control of the car the young driver died in a terrible crash while his companions were injured seriously. Again on 9th February a 17-year-old driving a car crashed against a two-wheeler, a bike and an immobile car causing serious injury to a woman. Now as the law to makes it explicit, it’s the parents who perpetrate such accidents. How very short-sighted to think that handing over a vehicle to an underage is good fun for the child and is safe for him and safe for others. I guess the price and the sleek looks of the car which is a status symbol for the family, make them go blind, insensitive and totally irresponsible. Public memory has not yet washed away the infamous case of an actor mauling labourers sleeping on the footpath in Mumbai. How the case was handled and how the actor got away with twisting the law and the law enforcement agencies is another saga. It makes us wonder what kind of psyche such parents and such adult perpetrators of crime have. Why should the law condone the guilty parents? Such human tragedies should make us stop and think. Such a lapse takes away the innocent lives of people on the road as well as the life of the juvenile driver too. Do we really want this happening to our child? Or to any other person? We all have to think and think hard about allowing underage driving is the result of a mindset, a psyche, an erroneous idea of the good life and status that results in deaths on the roads. No child and no human being should be losing their life because of the wayward thinking of certain parents. The right to safety on the roads is paramount for all.