Srinagar, Sep 3: The death of a 28-year-old motorcyclist in Srinagar today has once again drawn attention to a road-safety problem that is increasingly difficult to ignore: the vulnerability of two-wheeler riders on Kashmir’s roads. The accident was the latest in a series of motorcycle and scooty crashes reported across the Valley in recent weeks.
National Crime Records Bureau data for 2024 recorded 840 road-accident deaths in Jammu and Kashmir. Of these, 202 were people travelling on two-wheelers, almost one in every four road deaths recorded in the Union Territory. The same dataset recorded 2,198 injured two-wheeler occupants.
NCRB data for the city recorded 114 people injured in two-wheeler-related road accidents in 2024, with six deaths.
A recent hospital-based study from SKIMS Medical College Hospital, Bemina, provides an indication of how severely motorcycle crashes can affect victims. The study examined 200 adult two-wheeler accident victims treated at the tertiary-care facility and found that only 36, or 18 percent, had been wearing helmets at the time of the crash.
Among the victims, 164 were without helmets. Head injuries were recorded far more frequently among non-helmeted riders, while 14 of the 15 deaths in the study occurred among those who were not wearing helmets.
Traffic data as per the news agency Kashmir News Trust reveals that rural Kashmir recorded 1,502 road accidents and 210 fatalities in 2025, down from 1,729 accidents and 279 deaths in 2024.
Traffic authorities have identified dangerous stunts, over-speeding, wrong-lane driving and other violations as recurring problems. In 2025, Traffic Police Rural Kashmir said 30 people involved in dangerous stunts had been identified, counselled and booked. The department also reported that around 90 percent of two-wheeler riders were using helmets in its jurisdiction.
Recent cases have involved motorcycles and scooties in Srinagar, Shopian, Ramban and other parts of the Valley, including collisions with larger vehicles and single-vehicle crashes after riders lost control. In August, a scooty rider was killed in Srinagar’s Parimpora area, while a woman travelling as a pillion rider died after a scooty skidded in Shopian.
A Traffic official said that for Kashmir, where motorcycles and scooters have become an important mode of everyday transport because of their relatively low cost and ability to negotiate congested roads, every fatal crash carries a wider lesson.
“The question for traffic authorities is therefore not simply how many challans have been issued or how many accidents have been recorded, but whether the measures being taken are actually preventing riders from becoming the next casualty.” [KNT]
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