Bengaluru: Although there is one accidental death on Indian roads every five minutes, comfort continues to take precedence over safety among bikers, going by a 10- city survey, including Bengaluru, conducted recently by Exide Life Insurance. It covered 1169 respondents in the 18 to 45 age group.
Worryingly, 57 per cent of the two-wheeler riders interviewed admitted to not wearing a helmet while on the road and 74 per cent said they didn’t wear one while riding pillion.
Despite most states insisting on pillion riders wearing helmets, 24 per cent of the respondents believed that pillion riders were less at risk of head injury and 23 per cent of riders admitted to allowing their pillion rider to go without a helmet.
The survey has disturbingly concluded that comfort takes precedence over safety for many and for 22 per cent force of habit stops them from wearing a helmet.
Observes director, Marketing and Direct Channel, Exide Life Insurance, Mohit Goel,, “Helmets decrease the severity of the injury. Yet surprisingly, more than 70 per cent of Indians admit to not wearing a helmet while riding pillion.”
The study also found that the number of accidental deaths had increased by 44.2 per cent between 2001 and 2011. “This figure translates to one death on Indian roads every five minutes and is expected to escalate to one death every three minutes by 2020. Despite increased awareness of the issues, in absolute terms more people die in road crashes in India than anywhere else in the world, even the more populous China,” it says.
The nationwide survey was conducted in the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh, Patna, Lucknow, Kolkata, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai and Ahmedabad from October 12 to November 7 this year.
