The Mumbai traffic police are cracking a whip on the two-wheeler riders, who stubbornly refuse to wear helmets while riding on the city roads. In last few weeks, as many as 15,424 offenders have been booked for driving without a helmet and the Mumbai police plans to continue with the road safety campaign.
Following a few deadly accidents near the prominent educational institutes such as the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), the authorities decided to make the campaign stronger for the safety of youngsters driving a two-wheeler. For the last two months, traffic police has been seriously checking the two-wheeler drivers to ensure that they are driving safe wearing helmet.
The safety drive has been made stringer in the last two months. City police has ensured that wearing helmets is compulsory for two-wheeler riders. To make the drive more beneficial, some of the local educational organisations have offered their support. They have been motivating the youngsters to wear a reliable and protective helmet.
The civil engineering students’ association of MIT also held demonstrations and road shows on and outside the campus to spread awareness about road safety practices. Aditya, a student of MIT feels that it’s a crucial process which is rightly implemented; he says: “A robust start had to be made to create awareness over helmet. We still today see few people ignore this, but it’s for individual safety and life. Mandatory over helmet will create a healthy driving.”
After MIT, it was the turn of Mahatma Gandhi Mission (MGM) College to enforce the helmet rule.
As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), two-wheelers riders in many low-income and middle-income countries account for more than 50 per cent of those injured or killed on the roads.
It has suggested wearing a helmet as the single most effective way of reducing head injuries and fatalities resulting from motorcycle and bicycle crashes. Several road safety surveys have revealed that wearing a helmet has been shown to decrease the risk and severity of injuries among motorcyclists by about 70 per cent, the likelihood of death by almost 40 per cent and substantially reduce the cost of healthcare associated with such cases.
Apart from Mumbai, many states and cities have taken up the initiative. During the beginning of this year’s road safety fortnight, Aurangabad police commissioner held a meeting with the heads of different educational institutions, where he stressed that the initiative to make helmets compulsory would be more effective if colleges and coaching classes take the issue seriously.
He stressed on the Section 129 of Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, would be invoked against violators to begin with. Driving without helmet would cost Rs 100 under section 129 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.Driving dangerously: Rs 500 (Rs 1,000 in case where the users are different) under Section 184 of the Act.
In Maharashtra 1,906 drivers we booked on December 31 and a total of 2,84,421 drivers were booked till November 2015 for not wearing helmets. In Dakshina Karnataka, it’s recently marked as compulsory helmet rule for pillion riders being enforced and so far as many as 2,642 cases were booked in Mangaluru Commissionerate and Dakshina Kannada District Police limits.
While of these 1,517 cases were in Mangaluru Commissionerate limits yielding a fine amount of Rs 1.5 lakh, in Dakshina Kannada District Police limits 1,125 two wheeler riders were fined and the total fine amount collected as Rs 1.13 lakh.
While in Udupi, the first day of compulsory helmet rule for pillion riders received positive response in the district as 80 percent people preferred wearing helmet on Monday. Only 715 cases were booked of which 138 cases were registered in Manipal station limit and most the offenders were students.
Superintendent of Police from Annamalai has been strictly implementing the rule, he said: “About 80 per cent people preferred wearing helmet in Udupi district. After a week-long campaign on awareness about the new regulation, the traffic police fined Rs 100 for violations.”
While last year from August 1, the Traffic Department of Visakhapatnam Police Commissionerate stepped up its drive of the helmet enforcement, as per the earlier order to go all out on the enforcement from August 1. On day-one they booked 1,282 cases and collected a fine amount of over Rs. 1.47 lakh. The awareness campaign was taken up by the department for a period of over three months from January this year. The awareness campaign involved distribution of over one lakh pamphlets, involving volunteers and school children in organising awareness campaign at major junctions and holding seminars at colleges and public institutions.
The wearing of helmet is mandatory under Motor Vehicle Act and it has been enforce since long but the people never really followed the rule. As per the statistics in 2012, the traffic police department in Visakhapatnam booked 2,853 cases, in 2013 about 1.62 lakh cases were booked, in 2014 the cases booked were over 1.07 and till June this year the figure stands at 73,742.
In 2014, there were about 120 deaths involving two-wheeler riders and 411 persons were critically injured. While referring to the effective implementation of the helmet rule in cities like Delhi and Mumbai, the bench asked the governments to continuously launch special drives and take action which included booking of cases and cancellation of licence of those found riding without a helmet.
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