The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Wear your helmets, fasten your seatbelts

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 16, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Wear your helmets, fasten your seatbelts

Sandhya Soman

Transport Department goes out of its way to drive home message of safety

CHENNAI : The transport department is going out of its way to drive home the message that wearing helmets and fastening seatbelts can save lives.

The new measures: Candidates applying for a learner's licence are being asked to turn up for the driving test wearing helmets. Seatbelts will be mandatory for registering new four wheelers, says a senior transport department official.

Also from January 1, the transport officials started pasting a slip of paper on the newly issued RCs (registration certificates), asking two-wheeler drivers to wear helmets meeting Indian Standards Institution (ISI) standards.

However, officials say that unlike in Hyderabad where last week the courts cleared the way for the state government to implement its compulsory helmet policy from February, here the state Government is yet to formulate a similar policy.

Studies and statistics have repeatedly pointed to the connection between the rise in two-wheeler driver/pillion rider fatalities and lack of helmets.

According to the Chennai City Traffic Police, 71 per cent of road accidents involve persons on two-wheelers without helmets and pedestrians.

In fact, 96 out of the 97 persons killed in 2004 were not wearing any headgear.

A survey conducted among 1,514 two-wheeler drivers by the Institute of Road Transport in 2003 pointed out that 87 per cent were in favour of helmets. The survey also said that a majority of the riders would not bother to wear a helmet unless it was made compulsory.

The findings formed the basis for a public interest litigation filed in 2005 by Concert, a consumer association in the field of road safety, to make it compulsory for two-wheeler and pillion riders to wear helmets by implementing section 129 of the Motor Vehicles Act.

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