Abstract:
In Mumbai, one of the major cities in India, the total number of accidents including fatal,
serious, slight and minor road accidents has risen by 766 cases in 2015 as compared to the
previous year. The year 2015 has recorded the most deaths for people traveling on a
motorcycle and also shows that the number of pillion riders who have died has been the
highest at this year. Two-wheeler driver and pillion riders will now have to wear helmets in
Maharashtra with the state Transport department on February 2016 issuing a circular to this
effect as per the orders of the Bombay High Court. Thus, the study objective is to evaluate
the effect of a mandatory motorcycle helmet law on helmet usage, injury, and fatalities
among motorcyclists involved crash in Mumbai, India. The required data were collected in
two different time frames before and after the helmet mandatory law at selected ten study
locations in Mumbai, India during May to June 2015 and 2016 respectively. From the field
survey, a total of 28,209 and 37,245 samples was collected during 2015 and 2016
respectively. This study was performed the statistical analysis of the impact of the state strict
law of helmet usage before and after the law and it found that the helmet doesn't use
decreased from 32.8% in 2015 to 16.5% in 2016. In addition, this study was performed the
Pearson correlation and analysis of variance tests for identifying the impact of each variable
of helmet usage behavior and personal characteristics with helmet usage. Finally, binary logit
model was developed and validated to estimate the probabilities of two-wheeler driver
wearing the helmet. These study findings strongly suggest that increased helmet use through
strict helmet usage law would decrease the number of motorcyclist injuries in the Mumbai,
India.
