Every year, 1.25 million people die on the world’s roads, including more than 182, 000 children, and 50 million more people are severely injured. In cities, 270, 000 pedestrians lose their lives after being hit by a car. Road safety is a human rights issue. Road safety must be taken extremely seriously since it is a complex development issue, affecting multiple areas such as health, labour, education and above all human rights. We must fight for road safety and accessible mobility to be considered as a fundamental human right for everyone, most of all our children. In 2018,The ex UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said “Road safety is a human rights question. Today, international law imposes affirmative obligations on every State to take all reasonable steps to protect the right to life, the right to personal security, the right to health, and the right to development of all people. In 2015, The Bombay High Court held that citizens have a fundamental right to good roads and it is the state government’s statutory obligation to provide roads which are free of potholes. All municipal corporations shall maintain all roads within its jurisdiction in good and proper condition. It shall be their responsibility to ensure that potholes and ditches are properly filled, and at the time of any repair work a board shall be displayed giving details of the name of agency doing the digging work and the time period within which the work shall be completed,”
In 2017, Uttarakhand high court (HC), in its order said that the residents have a “fundamental right under Article 21 to get access to roads” and the state has “a constitutional obligation to provide roads for communication.”. The court also observed, “All the roads in the state of Uttarakhand have a strategic importance. The projects of national highways should not be delayed unnecessarily.
Citing a Supreme Court ruling regarding road facilities in Himachal Pradesh, the HC remarked, “Denial of the right (to roads) would be denial of life as understood in its richness and fullness by the ambit of the Constitution.” Bombay HC Ruled out that no city can become a smart city unless it has roads and footpaths in a reasonably good condition and Reminded the authorities that if citizens suffer harms due to failure of authorities to maintain roads in a good condition, then they can take action for claiming compensation. If a citizen suffers as a result of the failure of the state machinery to maintain roads, apart from liability under the regular law of torts, the person can take recourse to public law remedy. They can initiate action under public law to seek compensation from the authorities.
( The author is lawyer and a human rights defender. Views are his own [email protected])
