Welcoming the initiative of RTO offices Nagpur to strictly enforcing -Two Helmet per Two Wheeler, the Road Safety Organisation Trax has said the biggest challenge is to ensure the implementation of the rule in a right way and also to ensure only genuine ISI certified helmets to be provided to the buyers.
The Road Safety Organisation Trax which is working pan India on various road safety issues said that the onus of supplying an ISI helmet is with the Manufacturer. And, when this shifted to dealer’s end there is no mechanism to check the quality of the product and to ensure that the buyer gets only genuine ISI helmet. The reason is, the buyers of two-wheeler are not willing to buy the helmets from the two wheeler dealer and vice a versa a dealer is also not very keen to get into all this so he picks and provide whatever he gets cheap.
Commenting on the development Rajni Gandhi, Member Trax said that a layman cannot make any distinction between a fake, counterfeit non ISI and an ISI helmet just by its look and Nagpur is no an exception. As per, the Indian Motor Vehicle act the responsibility of providing genuine ISI helmet lies with the manufacturer only so that there is no infringement of the rule however when the responsibility shifted towards the two wheeler dealer the entire purpose of this rule gets defeated as you cannot check the durability and the authenticity of each and every helmet. The cost to manufacture a helmet as per the BSI standard is more than 500 and you are getting a helmet as low as 120 – 150 so one can imagine what kind of product he is being provided.
The Two Wheeler Helmet Manufacturers Association which has been proactively taking up the matter of helmet safety in India and are totally against the sale and manufacturing of fake helmets is in the opinion that it is an unfortunate truth that there are solid profits to be made in producing false ‘certification’ labels for motorcycle helmets. This can directly endanger the lives of those consumers. “Wearing a helmet decreases the risk and severity of injuries by 72% and the likelihood of death by up to 39%.
In current scenario many two wheeler manufacturers including Royal Enfield & Vespa are obeying the Motor Vehicle Act and providing the helmets to the dealers under their own name to avoid counterfeit and fake helmet issue which is a remarkable step.
Rajni Gandhi, sees road safety as a human right issue, she says that our market is flooded with sub-standard products and it is unaffordable for us to risks lives of our consumers, Hence a serious measure is to be taken.
In India, approximately 300000 people died on Road accidents as per WHO Global status report 2018. These are official recorded numbers and in total will be 4 times more as all accidents never get reported and recorded.