My family and I visit India and particularly Mumbai every year. Unfortunately, ever since I was a toddler, I have always felt unsafe on the very populated and busy streets of Mumbai. Cars, taxis, rickshaws (3-wheeled, open-air vehicles), and motorbikes are so common on the roads and highways, yet so many are so unsafe to drive in as they don’t have any protection. Sadly, I was right to feel unsafe. Each year in India, around 26,000 people die just because they weren’t wearing a seatbelt. It is not just because people don’t understand the importance of seatbelts and safety in vehicles, it is also because so many vehicles don’t have seatbelts, and many parts of the country don’t even have laws to mandate wearing seatbelts. Even if there are laws mandating all passengers of a 4-wheeled vehicle to wear seatbelts, these laws aren’t being enforced, and they also don’t apply to anyone on motorbikes (2 wheels) or in rickshaws (3 wheels).
The problem goes beyond just seatbelts. It is the lack of a vehicle safety culture. Even though Central Government laws exist mandating wearing seatbelts in the back-seat of a car, but Mumbai has no such mandate. Nor is anything enforced by the police. And unfortunately, ordinary citizens, such as my cousins and family members, have not grown up taking safety seriously.
In my family, from a young age, my parents taught my sister and I the importance of wearing seatbelts. They always told us how they would protect us and keep us safe in cars, and wearing a seatbelt became a habit of ours. In Mumbai, people don’t share the same sentiment because there is no education about car safety and seatbelts in India. There are so many reasons for this - in India and especially in Mumbai, there are so many different types of vehicles on the road, and all of them are designed completely differently.
Additionally, Mumbai is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, which also means that there are way more people on the roads and highways generally, already making driving in the city much tougher and more dangerous than in other cities. According to Mid-Day Mumbai, it was voted “the most stressful city to drive in” in 2021, especially since there are “510 cars per kilometer” and “over 100,000 people every square kilometer”. In India, only an estimated 7.4% of passengers in the backseat of a vehicle wore seatbelts in 2019, even though 81% of people driving in cars know that a lot of vehicles are equipped with seatbelts. Only 25% of all people in cars in all of India, including drivers and front-seat passengers, wear seatbelts.
The estimated U.S. use rate of seatbelts was 90.3% (2020). According to the U.S. Department of Transportation and the NHTSA, in the U.S. alone, seatbelts saved an estimated 14,955 lives (in 2017). People wear seatbelts for many reasons in the U.S. The law is much stricter in the U.S., and it is being enforced. People recognize how beneficial it is to wear seatbelts. Other reasons why people wear seatbelts in the U.S. include the fact that insurance is required for all vehicles, and if someone gets caught not wearing a seatbelt, their insurance will go up (and this is something that will stay for many years) - it becomes much more expensive. Additionally, other punishments include fines or the driver getting their license taken away. The U.S.’s population size is only 24% of India’s population, so if the laws were changed, increased seatbelt usage could have a huge impact on preventing a lot of fatalities (Google).
In Mumbai, the Traffic Police specify that “the driver and the person seated in the front seat must wear the seatbelts while the vehicle is in motion”, which implies that passengers sitting in the backseat of any vehicle aren’t required to wear them. Mumbai Police barely even enforce Mumbai’s traffic safety laws, due to the sheer number of vehicles on the road, let alone the Central Government’s rules.
The truth is, simply creating the laws won’t cut it - people won’t follow the rules unless they see good reason to. Creating the laws is a necessary first step though. In New Delhi, it has been mandatory for everyone in a vehicle to wear seatbelts for the last 30 years, but not many people follow this. Despite the laws being there in some places, since nothing is being done to enforce them and no one is teaching people the importance of seatbelts, nothing is changing.
Besides, in many vehicles that Mumbai residents use everyday, there aren’t even seatbelts or belt buckles. In rickshaws, the only thing holding all of the passengers in the backseat is a small metal bar, which can’t keep anyone safe. Also, so many people squish into the backseat of a rickshaw, which already makes driving in them much more dangerous.
Additionally, many residents of Mumbai and all of India don’t understand how important seatbelts are. According to a survey done by the Times of India, 37.8% of people don’t wear seatbelts since it isn’t mandatory, 23.9% don’t wear them due to a lack of awareness about seatbelt usage, and 4.6% don’t wear them because they think seatbelts will damage their clothes.
One way this problem could be addressed after stricter laws are created and enforced is for vehicle-booking companies to enforce this in their cars. In India, a company called Ola had 1.5 Billion bookings in 2018. Users can book a taxi, rickshaw, rental car, bike, or even a van through this service. Ola doesn’t mandate their drivers or any of their users to wear seatbelts when in their vehicles, but if this was changed, it could really help to address this problem. Ola is requiring all of its drivers to be vaccinated, which is great and it has been successful so far. If they could also mandate all persons in the vehicles wearing seatbelts, it could potentially save a lot of lives. Uber is also present, with around 50% of the market share, and they could also mandate this.
To fix this problem, it will take a lot of effort and a lot of time. Many organizations, including law makers, police, insurance companies, and ride share companies, will have to come together and contribute their resources to fix this problem and increase car safety education. This is especially important since in India, the percentage of fatalities from a car accident was 31% in 2019. If work is done to create change and address this problem, India might be able to no longer have the highest number of vehicle fatalities in the world. I hope to see a day where the mindset of passengers and drivers incorporates safety as much as it does in the U.S., and that in the future, my kids and my cousins’ kids will share a similar vehicle safety culture and that wearing seatbelts will become a habit for them as well.