Lessons from rear view mirror

“A total of 4,67,044 road accidents have been reported by States and Union Territories (UTs) in the calendar year 2018, claiming 1,51,417 lives and causing injuries to 4,69,418 persons”.That means every 3rd accident claims a life. Last Sunday was the second time in my life that I took severely injured bike accident victim in pool of blood to hospital, both survived. Probabilistically I have been lucky till now and do not want third such incident in my life. The aim of this writing is not to dive in data pool, but to ponder upon the seriousness the we and our institutions have given to road safety.

This issue is very personal to me. I have spent a lot of time of my life traveling, a significant part of it on road, on bike. While working in Nawada, Bihar, I clocked 10000 KM in a year familiarIzing myself with Almost every village road of 5 blocks of districts. At time I will be on long ride just to be in ocean of paddy in monsoon. Narrow village roads through green fields have been daily soothing affair for me. But Seeing overturned, crashed vehicles from recent accidents on side of road will break the calmness of rides as well as thought. Those images have been the best lessons on restrain and moderation in life. I feel a biker on Highway is on mercy of truck drivers, cars and fortune. Sunday’s accident, which I saw, was a flashback for me of 100 such moments when I felt I was just saved. It forced me to ponder upon how do we fare in our response to road safety, with special focus to the most vulnerable section, the biker group.

Fundamentally the first level of problem is that accidents are considered individualistic incidents. It’s considered problem of the guy who met with accident. That is when we absolve everyone else from their responsibility at macro level. A paradigm shift is needed to consider accidents as systemic issue that need to be tackled from multiple fronts. What are potential multiple fronts, stakeholders? Bike as a productAnd manufacturer, the biker and his behavioral aspects and all the institutions the administer travel on road are the most obvious actors.

The most important but also most ignored aspect is Bike as a product. Lot of potential is there to tackle bike accidents by product design, feature add on, additional accessories bundling and price modeling. Most popular and especially low cost mass market bike manufacturers in India take the minimalistic and utilitarian path in offering their bike product. Answering the trio “Kitna deti hai?”, “Kitna CC hai?” and “On road kitna lagega?” (Mileage, pick up and cost) in by the product offering is considered sufficient. And none of three question address safety concern.

Ironically the product itself fail bikers the most. I can not imagine buying a car and a seat belt separately. How many of us will go and buy seat belt separately? Car designers put seat belts, and linked it to alarm system nudging us when we don’t wear the seat belt. Then why Helmets are not mandatorily bundled with bike as a product? And that will still be minimalistic. Bike manufacturers can design helmets so integral to bike that riding bike feels incomplete without the helmet which came with bike. It can be made part of the bike body itself Both functionally and aesthetically. Functionally: Just imagine the we can not lock the bike while parking, without the helmet being attached to body in some way. And can not start driving without helmet being detached from it. That will make the helmet an integral part of it. Aesthetically: such design that the bike look incomplete without helmet. All these fantasy ideas are nothing but good design problems to have for an automobile architect.

Speed and overloading are core Reasons of fatalities on road. Today cars come with speed limit of 80 KMPH. Commercial Enterprises like Zoom Car, Revv, Drivezy, Ola Drive are probably mandating in built speed limit hardware to onboard cars. I find no reason why it should not be mandated for all cars in India. Almost no road in India is fit for 100 KMPH or above speed driving. But in the scope of this article, I will stick to bikes. We need very strong reasons to justify why Bikes in India should not have some speed limit (of around 60 KMPH to 80 KMPH) and extra passenger weight limit anywhere between 160 KG to 200 KG(to tackle triple riding). If lifts won’t have weight limit, we Indians will make them Mumbai local train and go upstairs with lift doors opened. That is what is happening with bikes riding 3-4 people at once.

I need expert opinion but I doubt that putting basic speed and extra weight sensor will increase cost significantly. In fact platforms like google map should start crowd sourcing and advising speed limit for bike rides as per terrain and route geometry(eg. Hairpin bend Ghat roads), accident history of spots and traffic especially for long rides. Going a step ahead, bike speed control system may interact with such platform to dynamically regulate bike speed and give warnings, if and when user opt for it.Though these fantasies may cost some money but it will save lives. Ideally buying bikes without basic speed and weight limit features, if an option, should be a luxury and one should pay premium for that.

Obviously non of these guarantee solution to behavioral problem of not wearing the helmet. And one may find hacks to remove the entire helmet system or speed-weight sensor from bike. That is exactly the problem, blame all on rider. Manufacturers can not run away from their responsibilities. Having car seat belt significantly increased its usage and so will happen with helmets integrated with bikes.

Insurance is a financial product mandated with the bike. So much can be done by integrating it with safety features. Buying a bike insurance product should be linked to providing an unique helmet number manufactured by authorized provider and of quality above minimum standard or else pay extra premium. Though helmet is related to individual’s insurance and has nothing to do with bike, there is behavioral correlation. Someone who is not serious for his own life, will not be very careful with the bike and should pay extra premium for the same. Note that I am not proposing to decline/reject insurance cover if one met accident without helmet, because that will be exclusionary. The purpose is to incentivize helmets Adoption and usage of requisite quality. I keep coming back to helmet adoption because most fatalities in bike accidents are due to head injuries.

There are many indirect stakeholders who can contribute to enforcing bike riding safety. Why should workplaces or any institutional parkings allow bikes without a helmet? When I was working in Private sector, while entering office complex, guards will check identity card and a sticker of the complex on car/bike. One, they should not allow bikes without helmets and two, why not put sticker on helmet only rather than bike. I don’t see any sabotage risk to the office complexes as identity cards are anyway checked. City bye laws should make it mandatory for office complexes to only allow bikes with helmet. Same can go for malls, cinema halls, restaurant parking and even petrol pumps. Obviously enforcement will demand some ownership from these institutions.

Workspaces, specially employers can do a whole lot of things to increase helmet adoption of its biker employees. An employee flaunts it’s employer logo printed t shirt, sweat shirts, laptop bags or bean bags given as annual gifts. Bikers would love to have a safe, robust, awesome looking helmet with employer name be an option. HR can go a step further in employee engagement. Offices spaces or employers can have helmet inventory of 10% employee strength which employees can subscribe at no cost but pay if lost.

This will also help employees who travel by bike taxi like Rapido, Ola bikes. Wearing Helmets provided these bike taxis (or by their partners, as they would say) are equivalent to crossing Ganga in Monsoon with our childhood “Kagaz ki Naav”(Crude boat do paper). Bike rent Startups like Bounce are struggling with issue of helmet theft. Tie up directly with employers, office complexes, market hubs are a possible touch points to provide helmets to these bike rent riders. At the risk of giving a very crude idea, It can be win win for both Rapido/Bouce as well as employers. Remember promoting bike/cycle usage save car parking space cost.

The problem is that apart from ideas related to product, all other work only in organized sectors and in Metros. We run out of Ideas the moment we go to small town and hinterland. Today I went to meet Jejusti Naik, whom I took to hospital on Sunday. 8stitches on head, broken shoulder and color bone and blurred memory of what happened that Sunday, he was served well by his two (dependent) wives at hospital. Rural India is nowadays fan of influencers, social media stars, rappers. Art has always been biggest change facilitator. May be some of these artists should take issue of behavioral change of bikers, helmet adoption, drink and drive or regularly interview one of bike accident survivor.