India Women Rider Safety & Mobility Report

The state of the road

Ask a woman in India what stops her riding freely, and she rarely names one thing. She names the road she rides on, the vehicles that crowd her, the helmet that does not fit, and the person she carries behind her. This report holds all four in view at once, because the women who answered our survey live all four at once.

Across 1,018 respondents — 542 who ride and 476 who travel pillion — a consistent picture emerges. The problems are not exotic or rare. They are ordinary, daily and widely shared, which is precisely why they have been so easy to overlook. When four in five riders name the same problem, it stops being a complaint and becomes a condition of the road.

Who rides, and how often

The sample is built to let riders and passengers speak separately, because their experiences of the same journey are not the same. Of the 1,018 women, 542 ride and 476 travel as pillion. Sixty per cent of all respondents are drawn from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala — states where helmet compliance runs markedly higher than the national picture, which means every helmet-related figure in this volume should be read as conservative rather than alarming.

Infrastructure: the surface beneath the wheel

The most widely shared problem in the whole study is not behaviour, equipment or harassment. It is the road itself. 82.3% of women riders cite poor road conditions as a top concern — the single highest incidence of any measure we recorded.

On a two-wheeler, road surface is not a comfort issue. It is a control issue. A pothole taken at speed, a broken edge, loose gravel on a turn — each is a moment when a rider can lose the machine, and each is more consequential for a lighter rider carrying a passenger. Infrastructure is where the largest number of women meet the largest risk.

Road behaviour: being treated as though invisible

After the road comes the traffic on it. 72.7% of women riders report that larger vehicles disregard them — cutting in, crowding, overtaking without room. This is the second-most-common experience in the study, and it compounds the first: a rider already managing a poor surface must also manage drivers who behave as if she is not there.

The pattern matters because it is not an accident of one bad junction. When nearly three-quarters of riders describe the same treatment, it describes a road culture, not a set of incidents.

Personal safety: harassment on the move

Mobility is not only about the vehicle. 57.7% of women riders report experiencing harassment — a majority, and a reminder that for women the journey carries a category of risk that has nothing to do with road engineering. It shapes route choice, time of travel and whether a woman rides at all.

Protective equipment: the helmet that goes unworn

A certified helmet that is not worn protects no one. This is the quiet failure at the centre of the equipment story. Nearly 63% of women riders — 62.9% — report problems with fit or comfort, and comfort is not a luxury: it is the difference between a helmet worn every day and one left on a hook.

The problem is sharper still for passengers. Among pillion riders, 58.6% find helmets uncomfortable and 47.5% say they rarely wear one at all, with pillion helmet usage sitting at just 52.5%. A helmet designed without women in mind is not a neutral object; it is a barrier to the very protection it promises.

Fit is not a feature of a helmet. It is the precondition for a helmet doing anything at all.

Product design: the women-first brief

If comfort determines whether protection is worn, then design is a safety intervention, not a styling exercise. The findings point to a plain brief: helmets sized and shaped for a wider range of heads, weighted so they do not strain the neck on long rides, ventilated for Indian heat, and designed to accommodate — rather than ignore — hair, which 43.9% of pillion passengers raise as a concern.

What the data asks of a helmet

Not a smaller version of a man's helmet in a different colour. A protective object designed from the first sketch around the people the data describes — because the alternative is the 62.9% who currently fight their equipment every time they ride.

The pillion experience: the passenger with no control

The most overlooked population in Indian road safety is the person on the back seat. She has no control over speed, braking or route — and, in six cases out of ten, nothing secure to hold. 61.1% of pillion passengers report having nothing secure to grip, which turns every sudden stop into a problem of physics she cannot influence.

This is why the pillion figures deserve their own report and their own index. The passenger is not a lesser rider; she is a different road user, with a different and largely unaddressed set of risks.

The Women's Mobility Index

To make this study repeatable and citable, every headline percentage is also expressed as an index on a 0–100 scale, where higher is always better. Each index is simply the share of respondents not reporting the relevant problem. Nothing is weighted or smoothed, so any figure can be checked against the underlying percentage. Once there are two editions, the movement between them becomes the finding.

The composite of 31.1 is the one-number summary of a woman's experience on India's roads in 2026. It is a baseline, not a verdict — its purpose is to be beaten.

What surprised us

Three findings ran against expectation. First, that infrastructure — not harassment or behaviour — is the most universally cited problem; the road itself is the great leveller. Second, that helmet discomfort is common enough (62.9% of riders) to be a public-health issue rather than a matter of individual preference. Third, that the pillion passenger, who appears in almost every journey, is almost entirely absent from how safety is measured — despite 61.1% having nothing to hold.

Implications & method

For helmet makers

Comfort is the safety lever. A helmet that 62.9% of women fight is a helmet many will stop wearing; designing for fit is designing for compliance.

For cities and road authorities

The Infrastructure Score of 17.7 says the surface is where the most women meet the most risk. It is also the score most directly within public control.

For anyone citing this work

Every index is reproducible from the published percentages, and the whole report is free to reproduce with attribution. The Women's Mobility Index is designed to gain a column each year rather than be replaced.