Wear helmet and be safe

Apparently there's been quite a drive to improve traffic safety here recently.  This sign is part of it:

It's the law now for drivers of motor bikes - or two wheelers as they are known here- to wear a helmet, and in Bangalore mostly they do.  The further out of town you go the less that is the case.  We didn't see any at all when we were in the country.

  I don't think I have yet seen a passenger wearing one.  And the majority of people are passengers - it's rare to see a bike with only one person on it.  Women in saris, small children balanced in front of the driver or wedged between two adult passengers, babes in arms.  I think the most we've seen on one bike is five people.  And few have succumbed to the motor bike shop's alluring advertising:

We did see one unexpected convert in the botanical gardens:

It's not just the number of passengers though - the motorbike (and it's close relative the auto (of which more later)  is the Indian beast of burden.  We've seen single riders wedged in between two piles of boxes or sacks, and bikes festooned with bundles of buckets or cooking pans to the degree that the driver was invisible from behind.  I saw a family of at least three carrying a bicycle wedged horizontally across the bike between them, and a passenger holding a window, complete with glass, between him and the driver.  T has seen someone riding with a ladder, with his head through between two rungs.  

I'm not sure the proposed law making helmets compulsory for passengers is quite enough!