Smoking while driving banned in New Delhi

Smoking while driving was banned in New Delhi on Monday in an attempt to reduce the hundreds of deaths from road accidents in the city annually.The Delhi High Court ruled that those caught smoking behind the wheel will be fined 500 rupees ($10).

Almost two thousand people are killed on the city’s roads with over eight thousand accidents every year, according to the Delhi Traffic Police.The court also ruled that public transport drivers — including state-run buses and taxis — must have completed a minimum of 12 years of education at school, rather than just 10 years, and that they wear name badges at all times.Extra-loud car horns and musical horns were also banned from the capital’s noisy roads.

Road rules are routinely flouted in New Delhi, which has close to three million vehicles, with drivers often skipping red lights and swerving across lanes.

It’s not the first time New Delhi’s courts have played an innovative role. A 1998 court order eventually forced all the city’s public transport to switch from petrol and diesel to compressed natural gas to cut pollution. In many instances, court orders are the only way to effect change in the city struggling with massive growth, a tangled bureaucracy, endemic corruption and lax law enforcement.

The court said it decided to step in on its own as the death toll on city roads mounted to over 1,900 annually and existing traffic laws, which have not been updated since their introduction 20 years ago, went largely ignored. While talking on a mobile phone when driving has been barred in dozens of countries, the no-smoking-while-driving law in private vehicles appears to be a precedent that could be closely watched in other countries.

New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said Tuesday that police were “ready to enforce the court decision.” But most drivers were skeptical, noting that with the capital’s notoriously corrupt traffic police it would be easy to avoid the new penalties. “In India I doubt this can be enforced. I can just give a bribe of 50 rupees ($1) and get away without paying it (the fine),” said Chetan Rawla, 20.

The court also raised fines for traditional traffic violations — like driving through red lights or failing to halt at a stop sign — from 100 rupees (about $2) to 600 rupees (US$13), noting that the paltry sums no longer acted as a deterrent in a country where people have grown increasingly wealthy as the economy has boomed.

Source : Reuters / Canada.com | Photograph : AP, Gurinder Osan

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