Traffic fines and misplaced priorities

Everything is upside down in India. The new motor vehicles rules kicked in recently with significant increases in fines for all kinds of traffic violations.

And people are pissed off.

Why are traffic fines so high in a country with such low income? Everyone is asking this.

When people get back saying that many advanced countries have such high fines. The retort is that they have high income and we are poor. And off course, the other guy is stamped as a bhakt.

I recently received a WhatsApp forward which listed traffic fines for different advanced economies. It made the point that fines in India are not the highest in the world.

Someone in the group did not like it and said that it should have also shown the per capita income of these countries to make a fair comparison. It was argued that a country which cannot ensure three square meals for all its citizens cannot have such high fines.

And this is exactly where things are upside down in our country.

People have forgotten that traffic fines are not implemented to ensure food safety but to ensure road safety.

While food is necessary to survive, ensuring that I get back home safely and not get killed by a road accident is equally important.

India is the country which has the ignonimity of having the highest number of road accident deaths in the world. To check such outsized impact on public mortality by road accidents, there has to be an outsized negative incentive for people to follow traffic rules.

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

It's because we are upside down. Our thought process is upside down. We wear helmets so that the police do not fine us, we put on seat belts only when we are near traffic signals due to the same reason. As if helmets and seat belts exist just because these are tools for the government to levy fines.

We are just so completely messed up!