Prof. Mike Oquaye
Parliament has passed a law criminalizing the death of a human fetus resulting from dangerous driving and cycling in a first-ever private member’s bill in the history of the country.
Voting 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 an unborn child and for related matters was done yesterday by the MPs who were excited to introduce that piece of legislation, which did not come from the executive.
The Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, with support from some MPs including the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, sponsored the bill that was considered under a certificate of urgency.
The Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Mike Oquaye, told the House on August 14, 2020 that the House would employ private member’s bills as an instrument of social engineering before the Seventh Parliament ended, and the passage was seen as a landmark achievement.
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 not more than 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.
Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said information from the Ghana Police Service and healthcare facilities indicated that a considerable number of women have lost their pregnancies as a result of road traffic crashes.
According to him, 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 resulted in the absence of data on the subject, which might be relevant for national development planning, he stated during the second reading of the bill.
“Considering international practice, State laws from Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska and South Carolina, they define an unborn child as a living organism of the species of homo sapiens in utero from conception onward to fertilisation.
“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,” he stated.
He stated that the statute 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 fetal 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.
“In order to protect posterity, particularly in the case of road transport, the bill seeks to amend the Road Traffic Act, 2004 (Act 683), to ensure that the law recognises the loss of an unborn child as a separate and distinct loss and not only an injury suffered by a pregnant woman.”
Clause I of the bill amended section 1 of Act 683 to prohibit the driver of a motor vehicle from driving dangerously on a road as not to result in the death of a person, including an unborn child.
The passed bill indicates that “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.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House