Breaking traffic rules is an ‘offense‘, a breach of law or an illegal act, how many drivers realise this? Traffic rules have been designed to bring order on roads and to facilitate safe and smooth movement of vehicles, but with largely poor quality education and training for learner drivers, low literacy amongst many drivers, shamefully low fines for traffic rules violations (as low as $3), corruption, poor policing and absence of any mechanism to imprison repeat offenders, the roads of India have become a haven for traffic offenders. The people of India need to be made aware that breaking traffic rules is an offense and those caught need to be treated sternly (like offenders), fined heavily and even jailed at least for a few days if not weeks (for offenses like driving on the wrong side of road). One way to look at India’s alarming road safety situation (the country has the worst rate of road accident mortality in the world, more than 1,00,000 people die on India’s roads every year) is that such a scenario exists because thousands of traffic ‘offenders’ roam around freely on India’s roads with little or no fear of the law.

This graphic attempts to highlight the contrast between driving skills and driving ethics amongst a huge number of drivers in India. Learning to drive in India essentially means learning to drive or handle a vehicle, driving schools teach little or no ethics here and the stringent tests people have to undergo in western countries to get their driving license are almost nonexistent in India. The Indian Government, over the past several years, has made several policies and decisions to introduce a vast variety and number of vehicles on Indian roads, but did not bother to set up quality driving institutes or stringent education systems for drivers. The chaos that has resulted from lack of driving ethics is vividly visible on Indian roads.