The Madras High Court also directed the Centre and the State to issue fresh notifications with decreased speed limit.
Chennai:
The Madras High Court has set aside a notification of the central government, fixing 120 kilometres/hour as the speed limit for vehicles running on highways.
A division bench of Justices N Kirubakaran (since retired) and Justice TV Thamilselvi, which quashed the notification dated April 6, 2018, recently, also directed the Centre and the State to issue fresh notifications with decreased speed limit.
Originally, while passing interim orders on an appeal on March 3 this year, the bench increased the compensation amount from ₹ 18.43 lakh to ₹ 1.50 crore to the appellant — a dentist, who had suffered 90 per cent disability due to a road accident that occurred in April 2013 in Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu.
The bench had also raised a set of 12 queries, the first of which was for a direction to the central government to reconsider its 2018 notification, increasing the speed limit to 120 kmph. The matter was posted in August for filing compliance report.
In its report, the Centre justified its action in increasing the speed limit. It said that keeping in view the better engine technology and improved road infrastructure, an expert committee was constituted to review the speed limits of motor vehicles and as per its recommendations, the maximum speeds for vehicles on different roads had been revised by the Ministry in the April 6 2018 notification.
However, the present bench observed that though there was a better engine technology and improved road infrastructure, there was no improvement in compliance of the road safety rules by the motorists.
From the report released by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the number of deaths taking place on roads would prove that more accidents were occurring due to speeding.
When speeding was a major cause for road accidents, it is not known as to how the improvement in road infrastructure and engine technology would reduce accidents. In fact, better engine technology would always be a reason for uncontrolled speed and thereby, cause more accidents, the bench said.
