Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari recently said his ministry is planning to approach the Supreme Court to challenge the 2021 judgment by the Madras High Court that brought speed limits down. The court in August 2021 had quashed a 2018 Central government notification that raised the speed limit to 120 kmph on expressways and 100 kmph on national highways, and ordered the restriction of the speed to 80 kmph citing over-speeding as a prime reason for accidents.
In a country where road safety continues to be a sham, any move to increase the speed limit should be accompanied by serious efforts to reduce road accidents. The provisional data from the TN transport department tells us a grim story: nearly 15,000 people perished on the roads in the state in 2021, a massive 42% increase from the pre-pandemic year of 2019. What is striking is that the graph has taken a V-turn, and reversed the trend of falling numbers in previous years.
The fall in 2020 was not surprising, thanks to the stringent lockdown imposed by the Centre that banned travel. But the big leap in 2021 is worrying. Experts and government officials attribute the jump to the increased usage of private vehicles as social distancing is the new norm. Many people are riding two-wheelers for hundreds of kilometres between cities. Lack of knowledge about road conditions and more inexperienced drivers on long-distance journeys could also have contributed to the spike in the number of fatalities.
As usual, the rains have disembowelled roads across the country and driving has become a pain. A quick redressal system needs to be in place to remedy these potential killer traps. Drunken driving should invite a more stringent punishment while rules on lane discipline need to be strictly implemented. While suggesting that the speed limit on expressways should be raised to 140 km per hour, Gadkari also wants to reduce road accidents by 50% by 2025. But given the trend of increasing number of accidents and fatalities, it may be a Herculean task.
