5 reasons why Indians DON’T wear rear seat-belts in cars

Getting Indians to wear the seatbelt in the driver’s seat needed the government to make a law and enforce it strictly. And passengers in the co-passenger’s seat and the rear seats hardly wear seatbelts. Here are 5 reasons why they don’t, according to a survey conducted by Maruti Suzuki – the largest automaker of the country.

1. No law. here is no law in India that mandates that passengers of the car other than the driver wear a seatbelt. Since traffic police can’t stop and fine cars whose passengers don’t have seatbelts on, people simply choose not to wear seatbelts. 45 % of the people who were surveyed felt this way.

2. Image. Wearing seatbelts is not masculine, according to a lot of Indians. They also think that their peers consider those wearing seatbelts as meek. Nearly 40 % of the survey respondents said they don’t wear seatbelts because of this factor.

3. Poor safety awareness. 34 % of the people who participated in the survey did not believe that the rear seatbelt was necessary to prevent injuries. They thought that the rear seatbelt would not really protect them from injuries in an accident as they didn’t seem to know how seatbelts worked.

4. Lifestyle or age. Younger people typically said that they didn’t care about wearing seatbelts. 80 % of those singles surveyed claimed to not wear seatbelts while this figure was 66 % for married people who had kids, and just 50 % of the people who were married and with kids.

5. Clothes. 32 % of people surveyed said that seatbelts crumple their clothes, and this was a main reason why they didn’t wear seatbelts.

It’s true that seatbelts can crumple clothes, but it is also true that life is more important than crisp clothes, and that accidents can happen anytime. So, wearing a seatbelt even in the rear seat is an absolute must.

Via ETAuto