Rising Ferry Fares in Andaman: 10-Year Analysis of Policy Failures and Impact

Road safety cannot be limited to enforcement of helmet rule;

In life-threatening situations, helmets unlikely to give adequate protection.

Debkumar Bhadra                    |          Musings of an Islander             |          South Andaman

Last week almost every local dailies carried a news item which reads …persons riding two wheelers in these islands are advised to wear proper ISI marked Head Protective Gear (Helmet) and also the pillion riders are advised to wear helmets for safety of their life. The release further adds that Andaman & Nicobar Police is going to launch special traffic drives against riders/pillion riders who do not wear the prescribed protective head gear. Anyone found violating the [helmet] rules will be viewed seriously and challaned as per Motor Vehicle Rule-1988.

At the face of it, one would be tempted to believe that wearing the protective gear is going to safeguard the occupants of motorized two wheelers [driver and pillion] against road accidents. But the question is - Will enforcement of helmet rule alone make our roads safer? Well the answer cannot be in the affirmative since hard evidence suggests crash helmet’s protection ability is limited to marginal reduction in impact in case of simple, low speed falls. Contrary to attributed benefits, helmet in fact lessens peripheral vision and the ability to hear which in turn makes the situation worse.

Evidence also suggests that helmets do not prevent neck injuries and in fact may increase them due to the additional weight. Particularly in the case of pillion riders, specifically children, women folks, senior citizens etc there is every chance that the additional load of the helmet could result in neck injury even in case of simple falls.

Tony “Pan” Sanfelipo, lead instructor and former member of the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT) Wisconsin, in a detailed post titled Understanding Head and Neck Trauma writes; when a body is stopped (due to crashing into a stationary object) or is hurled into space with a three pound helmet flexing the neck, the force of gravity causes the body to weigh many times its actual weight. For example, a male human head, without helmet, weighs about 10 pounds. If subjected to 10 'G's', that head briefly weighs about 100 pounds, passing that stress and load onto the neck. Consider adding a 3 pound helmet, and you begin to appreciate the forces your neck has to contend with [in an accident situation].

Going a little further, using a full form human dummy, developers of the Head and Neck Support (HANS) device found that the head briefly experiences 25 'G's' and weighs about 250 pounds in a 35 mile-per-hour impact. With those forces in play, the delicate human brain bounces around inside the skull (coup/contrecoup) with a force equal to weighing 75 pounds. A normal brain weighs about 3 pounds. Combined with this is the fact that the rotation of the head and neck during one of these crashes causes severe tearing and stretching of the tissues of the brain and brain stem. No helmet can prevent this [injury due to] collision of the brain within the skull.

Readers are encouraged to read the post titled Effects of Rotational Acceleration on a Helmeted Head by Don E Morgan M.A.I.P., Physicist, Inventor, Educator and Innovation Consultant, to fully understand the efficacy of helmet in life threatening situations.

Coming back to island conditions, if we take a closer look at some of the recent fatal accidents, one would be amazed that majority of those accidents occurred on roads that are the widest in the city. Be it the tragic death of a college girl riding pillion at Sippighat on March 2016, or the accident at Junglighat wherein a two wheeler rider was crushed to death or the one in which a youngster riding a scooter lost his life in an accident at new Pahargaon or the October 2016 accident at Garacharma wherein a lady riding pillion on a two wheeler was crushed under the wheels of a speeding bus. All these and similar fatalities have been reported from the Chakkar Gaon, Lamba line-School line, Bathu Basti-Garacharma road almost on regular basis in the past. This should ring a bell. Perhaps, immediate safety audit of the city roads, specifically the “engineering” and "geometry” aspects of the roads need to be conducted to ascertain the cause behind those flurry of accidents on these roads. May be among other issues, improper banking of the roads could be one of the reason.

Cows and blind turns a deadly combination

Road safety is a multi-sectoral and multi-dimensional subject which includes orderly development and management of roads, provision of safer vehicles, and a comprehensive response to accidents. Road safety therefore in no way be limited to enforcement of helmet rule, leave alone bringing the pillion rider in its ambit. If safety is to be ensured, stress ought to be on reduction of accidents by reliance on modern traffic management systems and practices, improved safety standards in design, construction, operation and proper maintenance of roads.

Every year a good number of vehicles are added to the existing population of vehicles but the islands road infrastructure has not seen a matching upgrade. A heterogeneous mixture of traffic comprising long chassis buses, trucks, cars, auto rickshaws, two wheelers sharing the road with pedestrians, as well as obstructive parking, poorly built and bad condition of roads; all contribute to the increasing rates of fatalities and injuries on city roads.

The Lt Governor of A&N Islands, Prof Jagdish Mukhi while condoling the death of Gagan Prit Kaur in a road accident at Garacharma, directed PBMC to undertake drives to get rid of stray cattle and dogs roaming freely in city roads. Direction of his Excellency has been obeyed in contempt; stray cattle still roam or occupy the centre of our city roads! If anything needs to be “viewed seriously” causes contributing to accidents needs to be viewed seriously and not whether someone’s wife or daughter riding pillion is wearing a helmet or not?

A huge number of fatalities occur from crash injuries to the pelvis, legs and chest, and the forces involved in a collision with a large motor vehicle is often far greater than the force a helmet can withstand before splitting. Helmets provide excellent protection against simple falls, bumps, knocks and scrapes, but as far as high-impact collision is concerned, they have failed to provide adequate protection.

It is also pertinent to point out that a large section of people use motorized two wheelers since it is the most convenient and economical way of commuting to one’s workplace, market, to drop children to schools, or women folks to workplace, senior citizens to hospitals etc. Hence if helmet rule is extended to pillion riders, a large section of the society not only will be inconvenienced, they would be exposed to dangers of getting hurt [neck injury due to additional load of the helmet] even in cases of simple falls. Therefore considering the hard fact that helmets are unlikely to give adequate protection in life threatening situation, such as collision at high speeds or when an automobile such as a truck or a bus is involved, the least the authorities could do is spare the pillion riders from the helmet rule.

Concern shown by the authorities, specifically the Hon’ble Lt Governor of the islands towards rising incidents of road accidents in the city is commendable, but if those accidents are to be minimized, authorities need to work towards removing the factors causing those accidents rather than spending time and resource towards reducing the impact. As long as factors contributing to accidents are left unaddressed, enforcement of helmet rule or for that matter its extension to cover pillion riders is not going to bring “the change” that the enforcement agencies “intend to see” on island roads.

The post was carried in the Port Blair edition of Echo of India dated 9 Nov, 2016
A newsreport based on blogpost has been carried by Andaman Sheekha dated 11 Nov, 2016