Kolkata to enforce ‘no helmet, no fuel’ rule from December 8

Nearly half of over 1.8 million vehicles registered in Kolkata in 2019 were two-wheelers. The number of two-wheelers went up from around 83,00,00 to around 93,00,00 between 2017 and 2019.

The Kolkata Police will launch the “no helmet, no fuel” campaign from December 8 to February 5 as part of efforts to check fatalities because of two-wheeler accidents.

No petrol pumps in the city will sell petrol to any two-wheeler rider who arrives without a helmet or is carrying a pillion rider without a helmet.(HT FILE PHOTO)

“No petrol pumps in the city shall sell petrol to any such two-wheeler rider who arrives at the petrol pump without a helmet or is carrying a pillion rider without a helmet,” said a police officer.

Earlier authorities in Noida, Aligarh and Bengaluru enforced such rules.

“We welcome the rule. But sometimes it becomes difficult to enforce such a rule without police protection,” said a petrol pump owner in Kolkata.

Nearly half of over 1.8 million vehicles registered in Kolkata in 2019 were two-wheelers. The number of two-wheelers went up from around 83,00,00 to around 93,00,00 between 2017 and 2019.

“It has been observed that the number of cases involving two-wheeler riders riding without helmets and carrying pillion riders without helmets has gone up manifold despite prosecutions,” said a second police officer.

The police registered around 93,855 cases of rash driving in 2019. One out of every three such rash driving cases, around 32,600 cases, involved two-wheelers.

According to the police’s annual review, they pursued 96,00,00 prosecutions in 2017. Around 11,000 involved violation of the helmet rule. The number of such prosecutions went up to over 2.1 million in 2019. It included over 60,00,00 cases involving two-wheeler drivers without helmets.