New Delhi: Pointing out that one death takes place every three minutes due to road accidents, the Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Centre and all States and Union Territories to implement road safety measures in right earnest. A bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta gave this direction in the writ petition filed by Dr S. Rajasekaran, eminent orthopaedician seeking urgent steps to prevent road accidents, which are the root cause for human problems.
The bench pointed out that that a very large number of deaths had been taking place due to road accidents and huge amounts running into hundreds of crores of rupees had been earmarked for road safety but the amounts are not being spent properly. The bench noted that the insurance companies had spent an amount of Rs 11,480 crores by way of compensation for deaths, injuries, third party property damage and other damage due to road accidents during 2015-16.
The bench said “There was one death almost every three minutes as a result of road accidents. Unfortunately, the legal heirs of half the victims were not compensated (perhaps being unaware of their entitlement). We express our distress at this unfortunate situation and had to remind all concerned that we were not dealing with an adversarial issue but a public interest litigation for the benefit of the common man particularly for the victims of road accidents and their legal heirs.”
