Three students were killed and a fourth was critically injured in the crash near Lotus Jetty, close to Haji Ali. Around 5.20 am on September 20, a BMW carrying four young men was negotiating a curve on Mumbai’s Coastal Road when it lost control, crashed through the roadside barrier and flew off the elevated road, plunging 75 feet onto an under-construction parking lot below.
Police are also probing whether alcohol consumption played a role, while the Regional Transport Office will examine the wrecked vehicle for mechanical failure or human error. “Road design is not something we are investigating. “But the current legal framework lacks teeth to ensure faulty practices are penalised, and there is also a need to increase the capacity of the police and other agencies to apply that law in practice. This accountability framework one of the much-publicised features of the act, which came into force seven years ago this month. This is despite Union minister of road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari himself mentioning the problem multiple times. This gives me a feeling that basically the engineers are responsible for increasing road accidents. Without those rules, the evidentiary chain becomes difficult to complete, with investigators having to establish how a road may have been unsafe, and which prescribed standard was violated and how that violation contributed to death or disability. “All municipal bodies must have urban design cells to ensure that the designs are as per the IRC guidelines. Institutional structures need to be put in place so these guidelines translate into actual designs which are then implemented on the ground, as recent IRC guidelines already give pedestrian safety and movement the highest priority in their recent iterations.
2019, designated authorities, contractors, consultants and concessionaires responsible for road design, construction and maintenance and introduced penalties in the event of death or disability due to lapses, according to Section 198A of the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act. “Most of the road accidents happen in the country due to small civil mistakes, faulty DPRs and nobody is held accountable. Police said the BMW appeared to have been travelling at around 120 kmph on the main carriageway, where the speed limit is 80 kmph, although its exact speed will be established during the investigation. However, so far, authorities are not probing whether the curve, or other elements of the road, complied with applicable safety standards, especially if the design could have prevented the automobile from flying and falling 75 feet. Especially since at least 12 crashes have been reported on the 10.58-km road since its inauguration in 2024, resulting in at least seven deaths. So, the main problem is road engineering and defective planning, and defective DPRs,” he had said on one such occasion during Global Road Infratech Summit on March 6, 2025. Tewari said the Supreme Court has now directed states to frame rules under Section 135(1A), and expressed hope that they would be notified within the next year.
The police have no role in looking into the road or whether there is any fault in its design,” a senior police official investigating the crash said. Tiwari said Indian road-design standards already incorporate the global best-practice principle of “forgiving road design” such as crash barriers, medians and shoulders to reduce the consequences of driver error in Indian road designs. However, the provision has not produced a prosecution yet according to government data furnished to Parliament as recently as August. Ranjit Gadgil, programme director at Pune-based civil society organisation Parisar and member of Road Safety Network, said court directions and technical standards ultimately have to be converted by governments and local authorities into rules, operating procedures and institutions.
He added that it is only through state-level sub-legislation under the MV Act and comprehensive Non-Motorised Transport (NMT) rules, which states have already been directed to notify as part of an earlier Supreme Court judgment, that accountability at the city level will be fixed.
