Mumbai schoolgirls receive GHVI helmets
Mumbai has marked its 2010 Road Safety Week with a call for motorcycle pillion passengers to wear helmets, and the distribution of children’s crash helmets by the Global Helmet Vaccine Initiative (GHVI).
Ashok Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra State, which includes India’s largest city, Mumbai, distributed the first of 900 crash helmets to be handed out to children during the Road Safety Week at an event organised by the Western India Automobile Association (WIAA) and the Mumbai Police. The helmets were provided by the FIA Foundation, Asia Injury Prevention Foundation and the WIAA as the first Global Helmet Vaccine Initiative collaboration in India.
Chief Minister Chavan welcomed the initiative and was joined by WIAA Executive Chairman Nitin Dossa and the Joint Commissioner of Mumbai Traffic Police, Sanjay Barve, in urging passengers on motorbikes and scooters to wear helmets. The Mumbai police have reduced motorcycle deaths in the city by more than 100 in each of the past two years by systematically enforcing helmet laws on drivers and raising public awareness. Yet for many in Mumbai and across Maharashtra the motorbike is the family transport, and whole families riding without helmets are a common sight.
Representing the GHVI, Saul Billingsley, Deputy Director of the FIA Foundation, and Greig Craft, President of the AIP Foundation, joined Chief Minister Chavan and other dignitaries at the launch of the Road Safety Week at the Islam Gymkhana, then visited a city school – to which nearly 1000 children travel with a parent every day by motorbike – to hand out helmets and explain the correct fitting and use procedures. They went on to hold discussions with Commissioner Barve and other officials.
Saul Billingsley said: “This initiative by the Western India Automobile Association is an excellent example of an auto club working with the authorities to complement enforcement strategies aimed at improving road user behaviour. The Mumbai Police are taking determined action to improve road safety, identifying leading killers such as non-helmet use and drink driving, and combining high profile policing with public education to reduce casualties. Today we have provided the helmet vaccine to hundreds of children. With financial support and political commitment, GHVI can help to innoculate many thousands more.”
Nitin Dossa, Executive Chairman of WIAA, said:
“I have to thank the FIA Foundation because this is the first time in India that we are getting a helmet for children. We will be going to schools and identifying small children who travel to school on a two-wheeler and giving them a helmet. It is very unfortunate that the parent has a helmet and the child does not.”
The Global Helmet Vaccine Initiative has been established by the AIP Foundation, FIA Foundation and the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility with the aim of promoting and establishing sustained helmet campaigns, combining advocacy for legislative change and political action with public awareness and distribution of helmets across the developing world. For more information see www.helmetvaccine.org
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