Parliament has passed the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill 2020 into an Act.
The Bill seeks to amend the Road Traffic Act, 2004 (Act 683) to proscribe acts that constitute dangerous driving and dangerous cycling that result in the death of a human fetus and related matters.
This is the first time a Private Member’s Bill proposed by Members of Parliament has been and approved by Parliament.
Proponents of the Bill, Kumbungu MP, Ras Mubarak, Chairman of Parliament’s Constitution and Legal Affairs Committee, Ben Abdallah, Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah–Bonsu, and Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu, said the intention is to ensure sanity on the roads.
Clause I of the Bill seeks to amend section 1 of Act 683 to prohibit the driver of a motor vehicle from driving dangerously on a road as to result in the death of a person including an unborn child.
A driver commits an offence if the driver drives dangerously on the road that results in the death of a person including an unborn child; that driver is, on summary conviction, liable to a term of imprisonment of not less than three years and not more than seven years.
Similarly, a person who rides a cycle dangerously on a road that results in the death of an unborn child commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a term of imprisonment of not less than three years and not more than seven years. Clause 2 of the Bill seeks to amend section 30 of Act 683 to achieve this purpose.
Clause 3 of the Bill seeks to amend section 124 of Act 683 to impose a duty on a driver of a motor vehicle to, as soon as reasonably practicable, report to a Police station on the occurrence of an accident that results in the death of an unborn child.
The memorandum accompanying the Bill, acknowledged that, “The Road Traffic Act, 2004 (Act 683) which was subsequently amended by the Road Traffic (Amendment) Act, 2008 (Act 761) generally provides for the protection of children.
Section 14 for example prohibits a person from driving a motor vehicle on a road when a child of five years or under five years is at the front seat of the motor vehicle.
Section 15 empowers the Minister to prescribe types of safety equipment that are recommended as conducive to the safety of children in the event of an accident to be fitted in the presented classes of motor vehicles”.
However, Act 683 is silent on legal remedies for an unborn child where a road traffic crash occurs.
Information from the Police and health care facilities indicate that a considerable number of women have lost their pregnancies as a result of road traffic crashes.
Also Act 683 does not impose a duty on a driver of a motor vehicle to report the death of an unborn child on the occurrence of a road traffic crash and it is impossible to charge an accused person for the death of an unborn child.
The absence of a duty to report the death of an unborn child in a road traffic crash inadvertently results in the absence of data on the subject which may be relevant for national development planning.
The reports said, by international practice, “State laws from Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska and South Carolina define an unborn child as a living organism of the species of homo sapiens in utero from conception onward to fertilization. Thus, there are penalties for persons who cause injury or death to unborn children in those jurisdictions.
Nebraska Revised Statute also provides a penalty for Motor Vehicle Homicide of an unborn child in wrongful death cases. It specifies that. Motor Vehicle Homicide of an unborn child should be treated as a separate and distinct case.
Queensland, Australia, which is a Commonwealth jurisdiction, introduced the specific foetal homicide laws in 1997, under which a driver of a motor vehicle may be charged with a separate offence of killing an unborn child; the sanction for which is a maximum penalty of life imprisonment”.
Story Filed By: Edzorna Francis Mensah
