India does not have a road safety problem. It has a road safety catastrophe. Every three minutes, someone dies on its roads. This is a country with barely 1 per cent of the world’s vehicles, yet it accounts for 11 per cent of global road deaths and 6 per cent of total crashes (MoRTH, 2018). The economic cost is staggering: An estimated 3.14 per cent of GDP is lost annually to the long-term income loss from road fatalities (MoRTH, 2023). Against this backdrop, drunk driving occupies a particularly troubling space.

International evidence suggests that alcohol-impaired driving contributes to 10-30 per cent of fatal crashes across countries (ITF, 2019). It is also, characteristically, not a one-off lapse but a habit, which is precisely the behaviour India’s newest road safety instrument is designed to catch. Speaking at the 66th SIAM Annual Convention in 2026, Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari announced plans to introduce a graded points system under which every traffic offence will debit a driver’s licence, and enough debits will cost them the licence altogether. The logic is straightforward: make the licence itself the collateral, and drivers will think twice.

Whether that logic holds for Indian drivers is another matter. A f ield study by Pahlé India Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank, across RTOs in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh in February 2025 found that over 90 per cent of drivers who self-reported drinking and driving are not fully aware of the legal consequences. The prevailing belief is simple: if caught, you pay a fine and move on. Few are aware of the possibility of imprisonment, the legal thresholds for blood alcohol content, or the sections that apply in the event of a violation. This is not indifference. These are people who have reasoned about the risk and arrived at the wrong answer.

That finding undermines the logic of deterrence-based campaigns. If messaging focuses on severe penalties while the audience believes enforcement........

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