Hanoi has been seeing fewer motorcycle deaths and injuries since its mandatory helmet law went into effect last year. This BBC dispatch from Nigeria, however, notes some of the challenges at work in getting the country’s unorganized moto-taxi drivers (and passengers) to similarly don headgear. Helmets are costly, and passengers often steal them. In response, some drivers have been wearing dried pumpkins as a ruse.

Kano Federal Road Safety Commission commander Yusuf Garba told the BBC they were taking a hard line with people found using the improvised helmets.

“We are impounding their bikes and want to take them to court so they can explain why they think wearing a calabash is good enough for their safety,” he said.

There is a curious additional dynamic: magical thinking.

Stories have also appeared in the local papers highlighting passengers’ fears that the helmets could be used by motorcyclists to cast spells on their clients, making it easy for them to be robbed.

“Some people can put juju inside the helmets and when they are worn the victim can either lose consciousness or be struck dumb,” passenger Kolawole Aremu told the Daily Trust newspaper.

This sounds absurd, but perhaps no more so than other forms of magical thinking when it comes to traffic safety: I’m driving on a quiet country road so I don’t need a seat-belt, drinking makes me a more cautious driver, etc.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 5:37 am and is filed under Traffic safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.