Rear Seat Seatbelts, What Are Those?

We, at Motown India, love safety as much as we love the vehicles that we drive.

Sadly, the people of our country, many of who claim to be auto enthusiasts, are not so keen on the safety aspects. The state of safety on Indian roads and our careless attitude towards following traffic rules is shocking, but more shocking facts are some of the figures released in a recent report.

The Rear Seat Belt Usage and Child Road Safety in India study, conducted by research firm MDRA for Nissan India and SaveLIFE Foundation, covered 11 Indian cities and recorded responses through 6,306 face-to-face interviews, 100 in-depth interviews, two focused group discussions and on-site observations to gauge compliance of CBSE School Bus guidelines as well as usage of rear seat belts. The report brings out many grim facts about safety on roads in our country. Road crashes are the leading cause of death amongst people between the age group of 5-29 years. In 2017, 25 children below the age of 18 were killed on Indian roads every day.

While most people seated in the front row of a car do wear seatbelts, a very small fraction of people wears seatbelts in the second row. In 2017 alone, 26,896 people died due to not using rear seat belts. While we do have laws in India mandating the use of seat seatbelts for the driver and co passenger as well for those at the rear to wear them, not many in the country do so. According to the Central Motor Vehicles Rules 1989 Rule 138, it is mandatory for the driver and the person seated in the front seat as well as the “persons occupying front facing rear seats, as the case may be, wear the seat belts while the vehicle is in motion”.