The Pune Police and Traffic Department seem to be taking the bull by its horns and sparing no effort to implement the helmet rule…
The department has been consistent with their enforcement since the first day of January and it is certainly yielding positive results.
In a recent drive carried by the traffic department that covered 22 traffic divisions monitoring the busiest junctions and intersections under their jurisdiction, it was recorded that 723 riders out of the 1,087 persons were wearing helmets.
City-based NGO Parisar also carried out a similar survey:
Both the surveys were done by taking photographs at 10 prominent intersections across the city, at peak and off-peak hours of the day. An analysis of the photographs for both showed the usage of helmets at 28% in the first one and 32% in the second, a shocking indicator of how callously road safety is been practised in Pune.
DCP Traffic went public with the implementation of the helmet law, yet, the city only saw a minuscule rise in helmet use soon after.
This too can be attributed to the announcement which again proves that enforcement of law is a big motivator to increase usage, noted Parisar.
A similar trend was seen in pillion rider usage too, where the first survey indicated an abysmal 1.1% usage and the second survey showed 4.1%
While speaking to Sandeep Gaikwad, Advocacy officer said, We plan to carry out our next survey in another six months to see whether and how much the enforcement impacts compliance. We intend to use this study as a baseline survey for our next survey.
There is no such study available at present, hence we decided to conduct our own. We are sure that if the Traffic Police keep up the monitoring and penalising of helmet-less riders, the usage will see a great surge and injuries and fatalities will come down drastically.
Ranjit Gadgil, Programme Director said, “Since the enforcement has finally begun in the city, it would be important for the Traffic department to monitor compliance rate systematically and set periodic goals which would guide the department on various approaches to enforcement.
Unless compliance rates are close to 100%, we may not see any significant drop in the fatalities in the city.
Satish Yewale, Engineering student says, “There is definitely a rise in the use of helmets. Our college has also made it compulsory for all the students.
If you want to get inside the college both the rider and pillion should be wearing helmets, otherwise their entry for the day is prohibited.
However the same is not seen on the road! While most of the riders have started wearing helmets, senior citizens, children and pillion riders are still seen without a helmet. This should be changed.
Local helmet vendor Avinash speaking to Pune365 said, “There has been 60 per cent rise in sale of helmets, since most of the IT companies have also made it compulsory now….
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#All views are those of the individual respondent’s and Pune365 does not necessarily subscribe to them.
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