- It’s a familiar sight on the roads of India’s capital: a motorbike rider wearing a helmet and visor with a female passenger who sits sidesaddle perilously helmet free.
- Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
It’s a familiar sight on the roads of India’s capital: a motorbike rider wearing a helmet and visor with a female passenger who sits sidesaddle perilously helmet free.
For years, under a Delhi law, helmets have been optional for women on motorcycles. Not anymore.
Delhi’s transport department ruled last week that such women must wear crash helmets or face a fine of 100 rupees ($1.70). But it might not be so easy to enforce.
The new rule, the latest turn in the road for women on two-wheels, continues to exempt Sikh women who say that wearing any kind of headgear, apart from a turban or a scarf, goes against their religion.
Anil Shukla, joint commissioner of Delhi traffic police, said the exemption of Sikh women from wearing helmets will be “a major impediment” in the implementation of the order since “it will be difficult to identify whether the woman passenger is a Sikh or not.”
The Delhi government had in 1998 made wearing helmets mandatory for all riders and passengers on motorcycles as well as scooters. But objections from the Sikh community led to a change in the law to make helmets optional for women.
Last week’s reversal of the rules follows a persistent run in the number of deaths among women in road traffic accidents – many of them scooter and motorcycle passengers.
In 2013, the latest year for which figures are available, 63 women died in motorcycle accidents in Delhi, according to Delhi’s traffic police, a similar number were killed in the two previous years. More than 250 women were injured in similar accidents in 2013. Traffic police say the vast majority of riders and passengers in Delhi are men but a disproportionate number of victims of head injuries from accidents are women.
Safety campaigners say helmets are unpopular among women passengers because wearing them ruins their hairstyles.
More than 200 women have been fined since last week for disobeying the new order, according to traffic police.
Traffic cops have been positioned at busy intersections around the city to intercept passengers without helmets and levy spot fines.
“Helmets should be compulsory for everyone. Accidents do not happen on the basis of religion,” Mr. Shukla, the traffic police commissioner added. “We are stopping all women passengers on two-wheelers without helmets. It’s up to them to prove whether they are Sikh.”
India accounts for more than 10% of total road fatalities world-wide despite having only 1% of the world’s vehicle population, according to the International Road Federation, a road safety advocacy group, which welcomed the change in the law on women and helmets.
“The lack of dedication on the part of policymakers in India has kept the country’s road safety record dismal,” said IRF Chairman K.K. Kapila.
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Prove You"re Sikh or Wear a Crash Helmet, Delhi Police Tell Women on Motorcycles
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