Making roads safer for India’s popular two-wheelers
Making roads safer for India’s popular two-wheelers
Road safety is a
critical development priority for South Asia, impacting health, wellbeing
and economic growth. Countries in the region must work together if they are to
achieve the goal of halving road crash deaths by 2030. This blog is part of our Together for
Road Safety campaign.
It is said that the inspiration for India’s
cheapest car came when one of India’s leading car manufacturers was moved by
the sheer vulnerability of a young family perched precariously on a motorbike -
mother dangerously clasping the younger child to her, with the father gingerly
balancing the older one between his knees as he made his way through Delhi’s
chaotic traffic.
In India, two-wheelers – motorbikes and scooters - remain the first
choice for upwardly mobile families and young commuters as they buy their first
motorized vehicles. The e-commerce boom has added to the
numbers of two-wheelers on Indian roads, and they now dominate urban delivery
systems.
Two-wheelers remain popular as they are cheap, make commuting easy where
public transport is insufficient or unreliable, and are simple to maneuver
through dense traffic. Women enjoy the freedom they
provide, as they save them from negotiating unlit sidewalks, waiting for buses,
using unsafe paratransit or depending on male family members to give them a
ride.
Not surprisingly, two-wheelers account for almost 70 percent of the total vehicles in
cities such as Chennai, Jaipur, and Nagpur . Sales have doubled
over seven years, rising from 12 million in 2011 to 21 million in 2019, and are
estimated to rise even further, reaching about 27 million by 2025.
Two-wheelers
are 30 times more prone to accidents than cars, and riders suffer a high rate
of death and disability.
Despite the gain in accessibility two-wheelers
offer, they pose a danger to themselves and to others as they weave and swerve
unpredictably through traffic, take over sidewalks or park anywhere.
At the same time, given the people’s large
dependence on these vehicles, the lack of well-designed supporting infrastructure
that allows them to travel safely is a double whammy for users.
Two-wheelers are 30 times more prone to accidents than cars, on a per km
travelled basis, and riders suffer a high rate of death and disability.
Road crashes are now the leading killer of people aged 5-29 years, aggravated
by lack of formal training and underage driving.
Yet, we remain far from managing or providing for
them.
New road
safety measures
To make India’s roads safer, the Government of India amended the Motor
Vehicle Act in 2019, introducing stringent penalties for traffic
violations. Further, safety features were included
in vehicle design, such that now all two-wheelers are equipped with an All-Time
Headlight On or Automatic Headlight On (AHO) system. For riders’ safety, all
helmets sold in the country need to comply with compulsory quality control
certification (BSI & ISI).
However, much more needs to be done in the areas of vehicle design, infrastructure
planning, legislation and enforcement to avoid Indian cities reaching an
impasse in mobility as well as safety. Measures
introduced in other countries and in other parts of India can provide useful
lessons for the country’s plans to enhance road safety.
Lessons
from across the world
- In Taipei, as part of improved road design, advanced
stop boxes have been set up for two-wheelers at road intersections.
- The Netherlands has mandated helmet use for all
vehicles that can travel faster than 25 km/h
- Global NCAP recommends installing crash
avoidance technologies like anti-lock brakes system and autonomous
emergency braking system in future two-wheelers and motorist safety
sensors in four-wheelers.
- To improve road behavior, India’s Smart Cities
Mission encouraged cities to install CCTV cameras at various
intersections.
- In Nagpur, India, traffic police fined more
than 2,000 violators from March to May 2018. Seeing the benefit, the
city administration was asked to expand the monitoring systems to
automatically detect other violations, including driving without a
helmet.
- A robust driving licensing and testing
procedure needs to be put in place.
- The shift to electric two-wheelers will also
address the air and noise pollution commonly associated with two-wheelers.
To put these approaches into action, it will be
important to understand the heterogenous mix of India’s traffic and the driving
behaviour of two-wheelers on Indian roads. It is also important that vehicle
design, infrastructure planning and policies are upgraded regularly,
enforcement is unyielding and community engagements is continuous. Right
now, the government is conducting a month-long road safety campaign which will
also help raise community awareness.
These measures could go a long way in ensuring a
safer and more enjoyable driving experience on Indian roads.
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