Highway liquor ban: Drunk driving is an excuse, real problem is government

Last night, on India Today TV, the country's former health minister, Ambumani Ramadoss, made an impassioned case against drunken driving, especially on highways, and went to the extent of saying Indians cannot hold their drink.

I wouldn't like to get into the second part of the argument, but I want to set at rest once and for all two lines of thought based on emotions, not facts, which appear to have prevailed over the honourable judges of the Supreme Court who ruled in favour of a ban on the sale and service of liquor within 500m of national and state highways in habitations with a population of 20,000 and more:

Argument one: Drunken driving is the leading cause of road accidents, especially on national and state highways.

Argument two: Hotels, restaurants and standalone bars, and retail vends, are responsible for drunken driving on the aforementioned highways, where most of the road accidents occurring in the country take place.

I did not have to work very hard, but just download the most recent (covering the year 2015) of the authoritative annual reports on “Road Accidents in India” prepared by the Transport Research Wing of the ministry of road transport and highways. And guess what I found?

"Intake of alcohol/drugs" accounted for a mere 3.3 per cent of road accidents (16,298 out of 5,01,423) and 4.6 per cent of the deaths caused by these accidents (6,755 out of 1,46,133). The principal cause of road accidents in the country is "exceeding lawful speed/over-speeding by drivers", which is responsible for 47.9 per cent of the mishaps (2,40,463 out of 5,01,423) and 44.2 per cent of the deaths caused by them (64,633 out of 1,46,133).

Another important point to note is that "intake of alcohol/drugs" is just one of 21 categories of "drivers' faults" and is way behind overspeeding in being the cause of road accidents - 16,298 compared with 2,40,463 - and also not giving "right of way to vehicle or pedestrian", which accounted for 25,020 accidents.

The figures point to an incontrovertible fact: there's no law enforcement that is working or effective on our national and state highways, and rural roads, the next big location of road accidents in the country.

Yet another pointer to this serious lapse on the part of the National Highway Authority of India and each and every state government is the fact that two-wheelers account for the highest number of road accidents in the country. Why are these vulnerable vehicles allowed on busy roads, especially national and state highways? Why don't they have dedicated lanes where they can be driven safely?

A noteworthy fact is that 67.6 per cent of all accidents took place in "uncontrolled areas" of our national and state highways and rural roads, which were responsible for 80,767 fatal road accidents.

The latter figure would have made the learned judges ponder over an important point: Are any of the offending hotels, restaurants and bars located on these roads? How can they then be held responsible for the continually surging road accident figures in the country?

Now, compare the accidents resulting from the "intake of alcohol/drugs" those caused by overloading or overcrowding as well as protruding loads (1,07,382) and defective vehicles (65,998), and it is self-evident that the blame lies squarely on the law enforcement agencies (if at all there exists anything effective for our national and state highways).

Why were these figures ignored in the arguments on the various cases that culminated in the Supreme Court's December 15, 2016, order? Even when eight states went to the apex court seeking clarifications on the order, no one brought these numbers to the notice of the learning judges.

And now let me share another explosive percentage figure. The most number of road accidents take place between 3 to 6 pm. (17.5 per cent) and 6 to 9 pm. (17 per cent), when the likelihood of people being inebriated is very low.

In fact, the hours when drunken driving, rationally speaking, would be at its peak - 9 pm to 6 am - just 21.9 per cent of all accidents took place in 2015. Seen differently, 78.1 per cent of all accidents took place at hours when people are supposed to be sober.

Even as lakhs of jobs are in jeopardy and crores in state revenues are at stake, the Union ministry of road transport and highways has to ask itself three uncomfortable questions (and if the answers are honest, it will know where to start the reformation process):

1. What has been done to the 700 "black spots" identified on national highways?

2.  How far has the National Highway Accident Relief Service Scheme progressed?

According to the report quoted in this story, the ministry had supplied 509 ambulances, including 140 with advance life support systems for 140 identified hospitals neighbouring the national highways, to the states. Are these enough for a country of 1.3 billion people? Is it enough to have an ambulance service at every 50km of the national highways? Shouldn't the limit be 25km?

3. How far has the plan of upgrading 52,000km of state highways been implemented? What has been  the progress of four-laning of highways, now that the threshold for upgradation has been reduced from  15,000 passenger car units to 10,000?

 These questions beg for answers. Stop blaming drunken driving because it's the easiest thing to do and also helps you gloss over bad policies and poor implementation.

Also read: SC's highway liquor ban is disastrous. Will kill hospitality sector, hit one million jobs

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