Why is underage driving so prevalent on our roads?

While we are disappointed at a recent report by this daily, which detailed an incident of how students protesting for road safety confronted a 19-year-old illegally driving a microbus while the vehicle's driver slept beside him, it is, unfortunately, too common a scene in our country. The young driver could not produce a driving licence or any other papers to the demonstrators, but claimed he had been driving the vehicle for the last four years without any issues. He may have meant this to be a reassuring statement, but it's anything but that. We are left to wonder how ineffectively the current road safety laws are implemented if a 19-year-old has been able to drive a passenger-laden motorised vehicle since he was 15 years old. It should be noted that the student protesters suspected that the driver was even younger than he claimed to be.

There is little doubt that recklessness on the roads—including the fact that teenagers are able to drive any motorised vehicle, from cars to buses, carrying people—is perpetuated by the authorities' apparent apathy towards road safety. Otherwise, how is it that the Road Transport Act, passed three years ago, is still in its draft form waiting to be vetted by the law ministry? Despite the first seven months of this year seeing a 42.25 percent hike in road accidents and a 39.98 percent rise in deaths in said accidents (compared to the same period in 2020), why did the government decide to delay the act's implementation by allowing transport owners and associations to negotiate some of its key sections? Who is to say how many of those thousands of lives lost on the roads were due to underage drivers being allowed to ply the roads, manning all sorts of vehicles? Anyone, including the traffic police, need only look at these drivers to know that they are clearly not old enough to drive. So, we wonder if bribes exchanging hands is the cause of human hauliers regularly being driven by adolescents on our roads.

We believe that the focus of the law should be shifted from underage drivers, who likely drive vehicles for very low wages to support their livelihoods, and instead be redirected towards traffic police and vehicle and transport association owners who allow these adolescents to put their own and others' lives at deathly risk. We also urge the government to speedily implement the Road Transport Act, especially in the face of the recent protests by students for safer roads and public transport. We hope that the coming years will not be reminiscent of 2018 as this year has been, in terms of poor safety on the country's roads and the authorities' apathy towards the situation.