Opinion: Road safety in India comes at a cost

A new government rule passed in the last few days that says all new two-wheelers will need to have ABS in India, not just the ones above 125cc. Reportedly, two BIS-certified helmets must be provided with every two-wheeler sold. 

This is the latest addition to a salvo of various emissions, safety and taxation laws that have increased two-wheeler prices by as much as double in some cases. For example, just five years back in 2020, the Bajaj CT 100 was India’s most affordable motorcycle at Rs 33,393. Today, Bajaj’s most affordable bike is the Platina 100 – also a bare-bones 100cc commuter, but it costs Rs 68,262.

Add in constantly rising input costs and the setbacks of the pandemic, and it’s no wonder that the Indian two-wheeler industry is yet to surpass FY2019’s all-time sales high of 21.18 million units. 

Seventy-five percent of all two-wheelers sold in India are below 125cc. A bulk of them (including the top sellers like the Hero Splendor and Honda Activa) have front drum brakes.

Equipping these bikes with ABS will also require a front disc brake, and the addition of both could raise the price by Rs 3,000-5,000 – depending on how much cost the manufacturer is willing to absorb. On hyper-cost-conscious vehicles where every rupee counts, that’s significant.

The sector will surely take a hit, and this is a downer for the industry. Nevertheless, it is also a step in the right direction because road safety in India is a disaster. At the same time, this is perhaps a lower rung on the ladder of India’s most concerning road safety issues.

While there is no doubt that advanced new roads are springing up all across the country, the progress in improving/controlling the behaviour of a billion road users is abysmal.

Signal-breaking, wrong-side driving, a complete lack of lane discipline, randomly cutting across busy roads – the list infuriatingly goes on. Simply put, our roads are a minefield of bad user behaviour and increasingly supplemented with rudeness and aggression. 

There’s also the fact that many roads – especially in Maharashtra – are bouncy, uneven and full of hazards for two-wheelers. Over the years, I’ve seen too many motorcyclists fall after losing control over uneven gaps between the cast slabs on some of our rough concrete roads.

Another regular crash occurs when bikers brake on mastic asphalt, which is that shiny black surface on many of our roads. Mastic has poor grip even in the dry but becomes almost slick in the wet.

Motorcycle riders are by far the most at risk, and we also have to be hyper-vigilant about road surface dangers that most car drivers are oblivious to. When we as a society fail at ensuring there’s common sense, reasonable lawfulness and basic courtesy on our roads, then I suppose the next best thing is to make the vehicles safer. 

1,68,491 people were killed on our roads in 2022, according to the SaveLife Foundation. Shockingly, wrong-side driving was listed as the second-biggest reason for those deaths, above drunk driving and only below speeding. Nearly 45 percent of the total deaths were two-wheeler users.

Mandating ABS on all two-wheelers will surely save lives, but to truly tackle the root of those horrific numbers is going to take a whole lot more.