Monday, April 22, 2013

What difference can bicycle helmets make?

My BHAG is to get all urban Indians who use cars and motorbikes to cycle to work, school and college. This will ease traffic congestion within cities and effectively curb raising levels of pollution and microclimate change which is affecting all Indian cities. How will I get Indians to bike? My social venture is going to support urban Indians who are so poor that cycling is their only possible mode of transportation. I hope that by supporting the majority of Indian cyclists, more people will be inclined to cycle, forcing urban design authorities to take notice and start including bicyclists in their infrastructure plans for cities.

My point being, I know the impact that I could have in an ideal world and it isn't exactly measurable unless you see a drastic change and there is an obvious link to my venture.

I decided to try a different approach to understanding the social impact.

What does a helmet do? Protect. Prevent injuries.

I started looking into incidents of traffic accidents in India. India has the highest number of deaths due to traffic accidents in the world. As of 2009, the 344 people are killed per day on Indian roads. 78.5% of the accidents are because of the fault of the driver and 1.2%  are the cyclists fault. In 2010 4.8% of the fatalities were cyclists and the total number of cyclists killed in India in 2010 is 6,203. Almost 50% of people who die in traffic accidents are pedestrians, motorcyclists and bicyclists. While 47% of the bicycle accidents are caused by solo falls, 18% of them are due to collision with motor vehicles. These numbers might vary for India because the cycling speeds are lowers and motor vehicle drivers do not to share the road.

In economic terms the Indian government is putting infrastructure in place to help people injured in accidents. The government has spent about $114 million on road safety in 2011-12. This includes advertising and education on TV, radio, hoardings, cinema slides, posters and murals. The government has also spent $0.16 Bn on setting up trauma care centers around nation highways.

So what difference can bicycle helmets make?

http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/india-no-1-in-road-accident-deaths_704455.html
http://morth.nic.in/writereaddata/mainlinkFile/File761.pdf
http://www.unescap.org/ttdw/common/Meetings/TIS/EGM-Roadsafety-2011/Status/Countries/India-2010-Status.pdf
http://www.transportgooru.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/091126-HealthEU-RoadAccidents.png

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