Most accidents
occurring in city are related to two wheelers
City police always
on the lookout for mo-bike riders without helmets
By Dinesh
Kamath
NAVI MUMBAI: The Navi Mumbai police is
always on the lookout for bikers and pillion riders (male/female) without
helmets just to impose fines on them so that they don’t commit the mistake of
not wearing helmets. Most of the accidents that took place in the last few
months were related to two-wheelers. There were quite many deaths and injuries
of occupants of two wheelers. The head injuries caused by such accidents can
ruin the life of a person.
When a system of imposing fines on occupants of
mo-bike without helmets was introduced the number of accidents involving two
wheelers did reduce considerably but not totally. This encouraged the state
government to increase the penalty for not wearing helmets hoping that this
would totally eliminate the occurrence of accidents.
The city police are trying all possible methods to
prevent accidents caused by not wearing helmets. They have held seminars at
various places in Navi Mumbai to create awareness among the mo-bike riders about
the kind of dangers they might face if they didn’t wear helmets. Since the
students are involved in most of the traffic violations, such kinds of seminars
were held in colleges too. The city police also carries out campaigns against
traffic violations from time to time so that the mo-bike riders always remain
alert and not avoid wearing helmets in order to escape from being fined.
An official in traffic department said, “We need an
expert to come up with statistical trends and normalized indicators of road
accidents, injuries & fatalities. There is need to highlight trends,
indicators, interstate comparisons and the latest characteristics of road
traffic accidents in the city. Both road traffic fatality data and injury data need
to be worked out. After that the policies on injury prevention and safety must
be based on local evidence and research. Health professionals and their
professional bodies across wide disciplines need to take an initiative for the
same with active commitment. A Road Traffic Accident (RTA) can be defined as,
'An event that occurs on a way or street open to public traffic; resulting in
one or more persons being injured or killed, where at least one moving vehicle
is involved. Thus RTA is a collision between vehicles; between vehicles and
pedestrians; between vehicles and animals; or between vehicles and geographical
or architectural obstacles.' Road traffic accidents are a human tragedy. They
involve high human suffering and socioeconomic costs in terms of premature
deaths, injuries, loss of productivity, and so on.”
A world magazine revealed “During 2008, Road Traffic
Injuries (RTI) ranked fourth among the leading causes of death in the world. Nearly
1.3 million people die every year on the world's roads and 20 to 50 million
people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many sustaining a disability as a result
of their injury. Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among
young people aged 15-29 years and cost countries 1-3% of the gross domestic
product (GDP). Ninety-one percent of the world's fatalities on the roads occur
in low-income and middle-income countries, even though these countries have
approximately half of the world's vehicles. Half of those dying on the world's
roads are 'vulnerable road users': Pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists.
Only 28 countries, representing 416 million people (7% of the world's
population), have adequate laws that address all five behavioural risk factors
(speed, drink-driving, helmets, seat-belts, and child restraints). If no action
is taken, road traffic crashes are predicted to result in the deaths of around
1.9 million people annually by 2020. Hence the goal of the United Nations'
Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011- 2020 is to save five million lives.”
Not only in Navi Mumbai but in entire India, the
motor vehicle population is growing at a faster rate than the economic and
population growth. The surge in motorization coupled with expansion of the road
network has brought with it the challenge of addressing adverse factors such as
the increase in road accidents. According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), road traffic injuries are the sixth leading cause of death in India with
a greater share of hospitalization, deaths, disabilities and socio-economic losses
in the young and middle-aged population. Road traffic injuries also place a
huge burden on the health sector in terms of pre-hospital and acute care and
rehabilitation.
The Navi Mumbai traffic authorities might find the following
publications useful to come up with ways and means to prevent road accidents:
'Road Accidents in India' is an annual publication of
the Transport Research Wing of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways,
Government of India. The Transport Research Wing is the nodal agency for
providing information data on various facets of roads and road transport. This
report presents information on various aspects of road accidents in the country
during the calendar year. The information is collected from the Police
Departments of the respective States/Union Territories (UTs) in the 19-item
format devised under the Asia Pacific Road Accident Data (APRAD)/Indian Road
Accident Data (IRAD) project of the United Nations' Economic and Social
Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP).
'Road
Transport Year Book' is another annual publication of the Transport Research
Wing of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India. The
Transport Research Wing collects and compiles data on the registered motor
vehicles from States/UTs and presents the information in this report.
'Accidental
Deaths and Suicides in India' is an annual publication of the National Crime
Records Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. This
report contains comprehensive statistics on a range of aspects with regard to
deaths due to accidents and suicides. The National Crime Records Bureau only
compiles and collates the data obtained through the State/UT Police and
presents the information in the form of this report.
These reports fulfil a wide variety of data
requirements of all the stakeholders like policy makers, police leadership at
various levels, transport departments, road safety professionals, researchers,
academia, media, NGOs and others.
Expansion in the road network, a surge in
motorization and the rising population contribute toward the increasing numbers
of road accidents, road accident injuries and road accident fatalities.
The major human factors that contribute to the
potency of road accident causation include drunken drivers, indecisiveness,
fatigue, distraction, and confusion. In addition, in most of the cases the
drivers are found to be inexperienced, risk takers, impulsive, aggressive,
casual and unaware of the road signals. Driver's fault could be the single-most
important factor responsible for accidents.
The spectrum of injuries from road crashes varies
from instant death to those requiring only first aid. The most common sources
of RTI data are from police and hospitals. The majority of deaths are reported
to the police due to their medico-legal nature, prosecution concerns, and
compensation needs. A few deaths and a majority of injuries are not reported to
the police due to several reasons. Even though every healthcare institution
provides care for RTI patients, details of RTIs are not clearly available, due
to the poor information system.
To be effective, policies on injury prevention and
safety must be based on local evidence and research, and designed to suit the
social, political, and economic circumstances. As a result, strategies to
increase research itself must develop alongside steps to stimulate policymakers
and practitioners to demand and use research evidence. Strengthening and
undertaking research on the public health burden and impact, understanding the
risk factors, characteristics of trauma, and measuring the impact of
interventions through well-designed public health and clinical research methods
(trauma registry, surveillance programs, hospital- and population-based studies
etc.) is the need of the hour. Health professionals and their professional
bodies across wide disciplines need to take an initiative for the same, with
active commitment.
