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Journalism of Courage
While details of the tragic circumstances in which former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry lost his life on Sunday (September 4) are yet to be officially stated, police officers in Maharashtra have said that it appears passengers in the back seat of the Mercedes were not wearing seatbelts.
Both men who were killed in the high-speed crash on National Highway 48 in Maharashtra’s Palghar district — Mistry and his friend Jehangir Pandole — were in the back seat. Dr Anahita Pandole, who was driving, and her husband, Darius Pandole, who was in the front passenger seat, suffered serious injuries.
How common is it for people to be killed or injured in a crash because they were not wearing a seat belt?
It is very common. Even in 2020, when a series of Covid-19 lockdowns kept traffic off roads for large parts of the year, as many as 41 people — 20 drivers and an equal number of passengers — died every day in car crashes while they were not wearing seat belts, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
The Ministry’s report, Road Accidents in India, 2020, says that 15,146 deaths occurred during that year due to “non wearing of seat belts” — 7,810 of these deaths were of drivers and 7,336 of passengers. The total number of deaths of people who were not wearing seat belts — including both drivers and passengers — comprised as much as 11.5 per cent of the total 1,31,714 deaths in road accidents in the country that year.
This number was higher in the previous, ‘normal’ year. So, in 2019, 20,885 people died due to not wearing of seat belts, making up around 14 per cent of all fatalities in road crashes in India that year.
What has been done about people not wearing seat belts?
Seat belts have been a perennial enforcement pain-point. Report after report by various panels and organisations have pointed out that enforcement of this rule was among the most challenging — and that this was needed to save lives.
A World Health Organisation report this year estimated: “Wearing a seat-belt reduces the risk of death among drivers and front seat occupants by 45-50 per cent, and the risk of death and serious injuries among rear seat occupants by 25 per cent.”
According to the NGO SaveLIFE Foundation, which has investigated road crashes for the police across India, around 30 per cent of fatalities have happened because victims did not wear seat belts. “A third of the deaths happened because of this,” said Piyush Tewari, founder of SaveLIFE.
This year, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has proposed that all front facing seats in motor vehicles used for the carriage of passengers, comprising not more than eight seats, in addition to the driver’s seat, manufactured on and after October 1, 2022, will be provided with three-point seat belts for all passengers.
Under section 194B of the newly amended Motor Vehicles Act, whoever drives a motor vehicle without a safety belt or carries passengers without seat belts, can be fined up to Rs 1,000. A sub-section of the Act also states that it’s compulsory to secure a child (age less than 14) with a safety belt. However, car drivers rarely follow the rules.
The Ministry’s road safety campaigns — videos, pamphlets, social media messages — repeatedly emphasise the importance of seat belts, including for rear seat passengers.
But why don’t people wear seat belts?
Maruti did a study in 2017 to find out why people did not wear seat belts. The results were surprising — and seemingly devoid of logic or reasoning.
So, while “weak legal enforcement” was just 32 per cent of the reasons, 27 per cent of respondents said wearing a seat belt “negatively impacted their image”.
Around a fourth of the respondents said seatbelts “ruined their clothes”, and 23 per cent said they did not even consider seat belts as a safety device.
The study, done in 17 major cities, found that only 25 per cent of respondents wore seat belts regularly.
According to a 2019-20 study by SaveLIFE, 37.8 per cent people said they thought wearing seat belts is not mandatory for passengers in the rear seat.
While the law mandates the use of rear seat belts, only 27.7 per cent of the respondents were aware of the law.
“As per our observations in strategic locations of six cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow and Bengaluru — it was found that 98.2 per cent people did not use rear seat belts. In Lucknow, Jaipur and Kolkata no one used rear seat belts,” the study says.
There were other reasons as well.
Many respondents in the survey said the rear seat belts were often inaccessible as they were “covered by the seat cover”. Many others said that if they wore a seat belt, it could be difficult to get out of a crashed car.
Over one-fifth of respondents said rear seat belts were most likely to be used while traveling in hilly areas, while 10 per cent respondents considered people might wear them while sleeping during a journey.
Respondents were asked if they or their passengers have ever asked about the availability of rear seat belts while traveling in a 4-wheeler.
The survey revealed that only 17 per cent of the respondents enquired about the availability of rear seat belts.
In another significant finding of the survey, Guwahati and Patna emerged as the top two places where respondents said they had been stopped by the police on the road for not wearing seat belts.
