Idle Chatter
In early 2016, the Hon’ble Bombay High Court passed a directive that required both the rider and pillion to wear helmets. Increasing number of CCTV cameras yet lack of enforcement suggests that people might be seeing but no one is keeping watch
WORKING WITH TWO-WHEELERS OFTEN teaches one a thing or two. Sometimes the hard way. Over the course of the last 18 years that I have been riding two-wheelers, I have had my share of falls. Most such falls would end up with me nursing my injured pride or my badly bruised ego but, occasionally, they would really hurt. Yes, the painful kind of hurt. I remember one in particular where a low-speed slide on a wet road ended with the brow of my head coming to rest on the crest of an unnaturally large pothole. Foolishly, I had not been wearing a helmet. The casual bravado of inexperienced youth culminated with a set of stitches, ugly bandages and a spectacular screaming session from both my mum and my girlfriend. I quickly realised that it’s, perhaps, best to keep calm and keep my lid on.
I was lucky. I could have landed up with serious injury to the head. At a higher impact velocity things may even have turned fatal — you never really know with a head injury. Indeed, one look at any statistics dealing with road traffic accidents relating to India shows that several hundred riders could have been saved had they been wearing helmets. No, there is absolutely no logic, no argument that one can put forth. Helmets save lives. Naturally, when the Hon’ble Bombay High Court came out with a directive at the beginning of the year that all riders and pillions across the State of Maharashtra were required to wear helmets, I, for one, heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, the Judiciary had done what needed to be done years ago.
Yet with more than half the year behind us, I see very little enforcement of this directive taking place. I live in Pune, which has an overwhelming population of two-wheeler riders, most of whom have an unhealthy disdain for self preservation in that they refrain from wearing helmets. The city also boasts of an intricate network of CCTV cameras at major junctions, offering the men in uniform (the police in this case) an unbridled view of the helmet-less riders that frequent our roads. However, while I’m sure every event, big or small, is being seen by the powers that be, I’m not sure who is keeping watch over infringements of court directives mandating the need for riders and pillions to wear helmets.
The moot point here is a simple one. We often get lost in the clamour for new laws and amendments to existing laws when something happens. Little do we realise that more often than not a majority of the laws needed to make our roads safer already exist. The question, therefore, is one of enforcement and not of the existence of a said law or directive. Is anyone listening?