Car keys are among the most ordinary things in a household, often within everyone’s reach. But when an underage child takes the family car and kills someone, parents may escape criminal liability by proving they were unaware of the offence, even if reasonable precautions could have prevented it. Section 199A of the Motor Vehicles Act allows ignorance to serve as a defence independent of due diligence.AdvertisementA recent fatal crash in Kochi brings this distinction into focus. A 17-year-old allegedly driving his father’s Mercedes-Benz killed a roadside eatery owner. His father, an Additional District Judge, maintains that he was asleep when his son took the car. Whether he bears criminal responsibility is for the courts to decide. But the case raises a wider question about whether ignorance alone should excuse an adult who failed to take reasonable precautions against underage driving.When ignorance becomes a defenceParliament introduced Section 199A in 2019 to hold guardians and vehicle owners accountable when juveniles commit offences under the Motor Vehicles Act. It deems them guilty of the contravention, presumes consent to the vehicle’s use and provides for up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs 25,000, alongside liability for the underlying offence.Adults can, however, escape punishment by proving either that they did not know about the offence or that they exercised all due diligence to prevent it. These are different things. A parent may genuinely be unaware of a particular journey without having taken any precautions.AdvertisementConsider parents who know their teenager has driven without a licence before but do nothing to stop it from happening again. Now consider parents who secure the car keys and warn their child against driving, but the child still manages to take the car. Neither may have known that the child had taken the car, but only one took precautions to prevent it. Section 199A does not require courts to distinguish between them if both establish that they were unaware of the offence.Making reasonable precautions a legal dutyCriminal punishment should ordinarily depend on a person’s own conduct. In 2024, the Kerala High Court recognised Section 199A as a special, independent offence intended to hold adults accountable for permitting or enabling unlawful driving by juveniles. But the law neither specifies what precautions adults must take nor requires them to demonstrate such precautions when claiming ignorance.Also Read | The places we go with the books we hearParliament should make reasonable precautions an express duty. Liability should rest on an adult’s failure to take them, rather than the child’s offence alone. Prosecutors should establish the juvenile’s offence, the adult’s responsibility for the child or vehicle, and circumstances indicating a failure to take reasonable precautions. Adults could then be required to explain the precautions they took, while the prosecution retains the burden of proving criminal liability.Courts could consider earlier incidents, access to keys, ignored warnings and what an adult could realistically have done. Parents cannot supervise teenagers every hour, but they can act on known risks. A fine may suit a breach of preventive duty, while imprisonment should require knowingly permitting unlawful driving or a serious, culpable failure of supervision.Even when there is enough evidence to prosecute an adult, delays in the child’s case may prevent that prosecution from continuing. In June 2024, the Kerala High Court described Section 199A as a sui generis offence, creating criminal liability for adults separate from the proceedings against the child. The juvenile’s contravention remains an essential ingredient, but adult prosecution could begin without waiting for the Juvenile Justice Board to determine whether the child committed it.The Court also held that adult prosecution cannot continue if the Board’s inquiry into a petty offence ends because its deadline expires. Under Section 14 of the Juvenile Justice Act, such inquiries must ordinarily finish within four months, extendable by two. An adult’s prosecution may therefore end simply because the Board missed the deadline, even though the allegation was never decided on its merits.These deadlines protect children from prolonged proceedings and must remain. But a case ending because of delay does not mean the alleged offence never occurred. Parliament should allow the court hearing the adult’s case to independently determine whether the offence occurred, based on proof beyond reasonable doubt. Such a finding should apply only to the adult, without reopening proceedings against the child or affecting the child’s legal position.Prevention must come before punishmentIn March 2025, the Union government informed the Rajya Sabha that 11,890 crashes involving minor drivers had been reported during 2023 and 2024, including 645 in Kerala. Its e-challan data covered only six states and Union Territories and did not show how many guardians or vehicle owners were prosecuted or convicted under Section 199A. Without those figures, it is difficult to assess whether the law deters underage driving.you may likeParliament should therefore revisit Section 199A to make reasonable precautions an enforceable duty, remove ignorance as an independent defence, ensure proportionate punishment and prevent procedural delays from automatically defeating adult prosecutions.Parents cannot prevent every act of disobedience, and the law should not expect them to. But it can distinguish between those who took reasonable precautions and those who ignored a foreseeable danger. The purpose of Section 199A should not be to find someone to punish whenever a minor drives unlawfully, but to make adults accountable for failures they could reasonably have prevented.The writer leads programmes, impact and policy advocacy at Crashfree India