All above four years of age must wear helmets
Although wearing a helmet is definitely discomforting to the riders, its advantages easily outweigh the hardship of sporting one. Of course, there is much more to safety than mere comfort. Head followed by chest and abdomen are prone to severe injuries in road accidents. Linear or direct impact forces on the head are considerably reduced due to high quality helmets. The foam shell of the helmets largely absorbs the impact thereby dissipating the impact energy. Skull injuries and fractures are avoided or minimised, so are brain injuries. Several reports have indicated that fatalities due to two-wheeler accidents are lessened by thirty seven percent when a driver or pillion rider protect their heads with helmets.
Head injury risk is reduced by sixty nine percent due to helmet use. Moreover, severity of road accident injuries are unquestionably minimised. An All India Institute of Medical Sciences(AIMS) Trauma Centre study has said that, in 2022, forty percent of pillion riders of Delhi suffered injuries because they did not wear helmets. Simultaneously, the encouraging aspect of the study was that eighty-five percent of the bikers used helmets. The Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 has made helmet use compulsory in India. The amended Act of 2019 says that every individual above the age of four shall wear protective gears while riding motorcycles; that includes both the rider and the one riding pillion.
Ganapathi Bhat, Akola
Dangerous underpass outside GMC
That underpass outside the Goa Medical College at Bambolim which is used by a lot of students and public at large is usually always in darkness as the lights there rarely function. Whether the CCTVs installed are functional is another issue.
Students, women and the elderly have to walk in the dark on that narrow road as there are no footpaths within the underpass. Besides there is construction debris lying all over making the place further dangerous. To add to the misery, during the monsoon there is perennial flooding.
As that entire underpass is very unsafe for the public and children in particular, the authorities need to ensure this full area is lighted properly and the CCTV is in operation while police patrolling would also ensure safety of the people. There is also a need to maintain cleanliness and sanitation within the underpass.
Let us not wait for some untoward incident to happen. Hopefully there will be some steps taken swiftly to ensure that the Health and Safety of those using that underpass is not compromised.
Aires Rodrigues, Ribandar
Stop destruction of forests
It is disturbing to note how people keep ignoring all guidelines, advisories, concerns regarding the environmental disaster looming large over the horizon. At regular intervals, one would find environmental disasters happening in the country in some form or the other. For instance, large scale cutting down of century old trees, destruction of forests, wetlands, etc.; the trees being cut down in Corbett Park in Uttarakhand being a case in point.
I’m reminded of the mass butchering of thousands of century old trees at Aarey forests in Mumbai couple of years back for the controversial metro car shed.
Where are we heading, if not on the road to disaster? We need to understand, this Earth is the only planet which has Life and if it is destroyed, Life itself is doomed!
Melville X D’Souza, Mumbai
Outsiders imposing themselves on States
The Abhishek Singhvi debacle recently in the Himachal Pradesh Rajya Sabha elections is a lesson to the Congress party that it should keep its ear close to the ground across India particularly before any elections and during the formation of ministry after winning an election. They should remember Goa and Manipur for having to give up power to wily BJP who will go to any extent to topple the Congress. The BJP had to become street smart after being principally in the Opposition until 2014. Once in power, they will consolidate their position and not give up easily.
The Congress on the other hand is going around with its nose in the air not observing what is happening at ground level. That is why they get tripped most of the time. The ability to recover from the crisis is not as important as having the ability to stop the crisis from happening. The other reason for Abhishek Singhvi not getting elected could be because he is not local, the people may like someone from within the State to be elected to the Rajya Sabha.
That was the original intention in the Constitution which has over time been misused with outsiders being imposed because the seats are safe. So yet another lesson for the Congress to digest.
Srinivas Kamat, Alto St Cruz
