Sometimes the smallest of matters says a lot about “character”, or the lack of it. The outrage from a section—alas, a large section—to the hefty fines imposed on errant drivers by the newly amended Motor Vehicles Act borders on being a statement on some of India’s characters. The truth is ugly: Computer servers of state transport departments are crashing because of the rush of drivers trying to get their licences made or long queues of vehicles are being witnessed at petrol pumps for PUC (pollution under check) certificates. In other words, innumerable licence-less drivers and pollution unchecked vehicles were operating with impunity on Indian roads, until recently. Along with this, if the other gazillion daily traffic violations are taken into account, it appears as if breaking the law has become the unwritten law in this country; and the protest against the amended MV Act is actually about protecting the Indian drivers’ “right to break law”. In such a scenario, if the fear of hefty fines brings about even a modicum of discipline on Indian roads, what is wrong in that? Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari is right when he says that “if one obeys the traffic rules, one shouldn’t have to worry about heavy fines”. But then Mr Gadkari’s own party governments are wary of imposing the apparently “anti people” legislation in their respective states, especially those who are facing Assembly elections. Surely certain things are above politics, including the near-five lakh road accidents that take place every year and the over 1.5 lakh deaths. This amounts to a humungous over-400 deaths a day. India is just behind China in the number of fatalities from road accidents in the world. India is also signatory to the World Health Organization’s 2015 “Brasilia Declaration on Road Safety”, in which countries agreed to implement “ways to halve road traffic deaths by the end of this decade”. The Brasilia Declaration “highlights strategies to ensure the safety of all road users, particularly by improving laws and enforcement; making roads safer through infrastructural modifications; ensuring that vehicles are equipped with life-saving technologies; and enhancing emergency trauma care systems.” There is no doubt that among the conditions that have been laid down, India has a long way to go in areas such as emergency trauma care, infrastructural modifications and enforcement of law. India’s police forces are woefully short-staffed, the reason why highway patrolling is near non-existent in vast swathes of the land. Road conditions are often pitiable, thus jeopardising the safety of commuters and adding to a fair share of accidents and deaths. Hospitals outside city limits are far and few between for trauma care to be effective. So the demand that the system should be perfected for preventing road deaths is justifiable. There is no doubt that these shortcomings have to be tackled on a war footing by the government, but civilians too have certain responsibilities towards society, co-existence with fellow citizens in a civilised manner being the most basic of them. Following road safety rules is a marker that divides the civilised from those who are not. Civilised behaviour demands that road rules are followed even when policing is absent. Absence of authority does not mean licence to indulge in chaos. And blackmail, which a union of transporters indulged in, in Delhi-NCR on Thursday, by pulling out a large number of vehicles from the roads to try and force the government to revoke the amended Act, is no way to make grievances heard. Discussions can happen, but bad behaviour can never be rewarded. That the fear of paying a penalty is forcing at least some drivers to try to follow the rules is obvious from the rush for licences and PUCs. At the same time, it’s also true that several other measures have to be implemented to make our roads accident free. But at least a beginning has been made by the amended MV Act, which should be appreciated and persevered with despite opposition from the short-sighted in a manner reminiscent of the outrage when computers first became ubiquitous in India in the 1980s.