Do Parents Understand the consequences UNDERAGE DRIVING? OF

for accidents that are fatal or have grievous, life-limiting injuries. Before we go on to understand the law about underage driving, it would be wise to understand the reasons leading to accidents. Young people love speed and are not able to manage speed if they are underage, unlicensed drivers.

Underage teens do indulge in drink and driving and drug use at times and they are careless about seat belts and helmets. Distracted driving is common in teens. All these reasons are applicable to adult youth and even middle age groups too. Now to come back to the vital question of AGE and UNDER AGE.

India’s recently amended Motor Vehicle Act 2019 emphasizes underage driving and tend to 3 years along with a fine of 25, 000/rupees. It further says that such an underage driver will not be permitted to obtain a license till 25 years of age. Now the new laws as stipulated in the MVA are really scary and drastic. A sad fact is in India the laws come into existence yet their applicability remains very low and many times compromised. It is a very sad state of affairs for how can we forget the risk of dangerous and distracted driving when we allow our children under 18 years to drive?

The result of accidents by underage drivers is predictably tragic for the child driver, the occupants in the car, and mostly friends of the car driver's child. Again such accidents rible crash while his companions were injured seriously. Again on 9th February a 17-year-old driving a car crashed against a two-wheeler, a bike and an immobile car causing serious injury to a woman. Now as the law to makes it explicit, it’s the parents who perpetrate such accidents. How very short-sighted to think that handing over a vehicle to an underage is good fun for the child and is safe for him and safe for others.

I guess the price and the sleek looks of the car which is a status symbol for the family, make them go blind, insensitive and totally irresponsible. Public memory has not yet washed away the infamous case of an actor mauling labourers sleeping on the foot kind of psyche such parents and such adult perpetrators of crime have. Why should the law condone the guilty parents?

Such human tragedies should make us stop and think. Such a lapse takes away the innocent lives of people on the road as well as the life of the juvenile driver too. Do we really want this happening to our child? Or to any other person? We all have to think and think hard about allowing underage driving is the result of a mindset, a psyche, an erroneous idea of the good life and status that results in deaths on the roads. No child and no human being should be losing their life because of the wayward thinking of certain parents. The right to safety on the roads is paramount for all.