[Rahul Rao]

Originally Posted by vamsi2390

My Duster has the same hydraulic power assisted steering setup. It holds it line damn well on highways and light enough for city as well. I concur with GTO's view that it might just be bad calibration.

Duster has an electro-hydraulic power steering, that is a Hydraulic pump driven by an electric motor.

The motor is also ticking away slowly at most times, and increases speed whenever there is load.

Rahul

[balenoed_]

4 killed when the car rammed on to a stationary tanker on Bangalore - Mysore road.





Pic courtesy - Star of Mysore

[Chetan_Rao]

No under-run bar on the truck, possibly no tail-lamps/reflectors either.

Throw in long sweeping curves in the mix that could potentially act as blind turns at night, Mysore Road can be really dangerous with even momentary lapses of concentration and/or visibility at night.

[SamitMukherjee]

Perhaps the tanker did not have rear under-run bar.

Also this picture speaks much about Maruti's light build quality.

Hope they work on it soon.

[ask_017]

Inexperienced in night drives, parked lorry, drowsiness - perfect recipe for disaster.

Majority of people from Kerala fall into this trap while driving in unfamiliar highways in neighbouring states. Maybe it's the good highways that give a false sense of 'can cruise safely' which catches out the drivers at times.

[blackwasp]

Originally Posted by balenoed_

4 killed when the car rammed on to a stationary tanker on Bangalore - Mysore road.

Thanks to BHPian albertprince for sharing this:

Sharing the video of the accident. No fault of the lorry IMHO as it seems to be parked. Looks like the driver dozed off.

https://youtu.be/m_w8SWdoWGE

The report is in Malyalam, but requesting BHPians to translate if possible.

Source: Kerala Online News

[Thad E Ginathom]

Obviously the tanker driver's fault?

Some people could drive into a mountain. And blame the mountain. Sadly, I doubt that this driver lived to blame anything ever again.

[jailbird_fynix]

Originally Posted by blackwasp

The report is in Malyalam, but requesting BHPians to translate if possible.

Source: Kerala Online News

It only says that the four of them were returning from Bangalore after a wedding (2 of the passengers were newly-wed) and the accident occurred around 1 am in the morning. No further details about the accident has been mentioned.

[terra85]

Originally Posted by GTO

That's the 5th or 6th Harrier crash I've seen on the forum itself (God knows how many are there offline).

Don't want to sound too presumptuous, but am just wondering if & how many crashes that dangerously sensitive steering has caused. From our Official Review:


If you make one mildly strong flick of the steering at speed, you'll lose control of the Harrier. It's that bad at 120 kmph.

When the car undergoes testing homologation prior to launch, what on earth do they test . Isn't this something that should be checked by the authorities.

What's the point of only having airbags and abs. A badly handling car is more dangerous, the safety testing should also include moose test, braking tests and the results be advertised.

[venkyhere]

Originally Posted by terra85

A badly handling car is more dangerous, the safety testing should also include moose test, braking tests and the results be advertised.

Forget about moose and braking tests, what about a bog-standard indian NCAP with some 'regular' crash tests like frontal/frontal-offset/T-bone etc ? if it were in place (too late already) , many tin-cans (multiple manufacturers) will never get built. Indian lives are being lost (humans make mistakes, hence people will crash cars) purely because car manufactures are utilizing the gaping loopholes in our regulations and cutting costs, hiding behind the veil of 'cost-sensitive-market'. (it's a BS excuse for not being ready to let go of some margins)

[albertprince]

Originally Posted by blackwasp

Thanks to BHPian albertprince for sharing this:

Sharing the video of the accident. No fault of the lorry IMHO as it seems to be parked. Looks like the driver dozed off.

The report is in Malyalam, but requesting BHPians to translate if possible.

Source: Kerala Online News

Thank you for posting this on my behalf.

The report says that the incident happened at 1 am .
2 couples who were on board passed away in the accident.

Seems like airbags didn't help at all and the car is torn of completely.

[self_driven]

Originally Posted by albertprince

Seems like airbags didn't help at all and the car is torn of completely.

Airbags won't help in this case where the front end has gone under the tanker. Point of impact is directly at the wafer-thin roof (in most budget cars) and not even the pillars as seen in pictures posted before.

Cars with a tall bonnet such as Endeavour and Fortuner would have fared better by putting the crumple zones and airbags to use but looking at the crash video, front passengers would still have got badly injured.

[ask_017]

Originally Posted by albertprince

Thank you for posting this on my behalf.

The report says that the incident happened at 1 am .
2 couples who were on board passed away in the accident.

Seems like airbags didn't help at all and the car is torn of completely.

From the video, the car rammed into the lorry at full speed which might well indicate the driver had dozed off.

[sandsun7]

Originally Posted by blackwasp

Sharing the video of the accident. No fault of the lorry IMHO as it seems to be parked. Looks like the driver dozed off.

The reliance pump in front of which this happened is around a KM away from the shimsha bridge on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. There is a sharp curve just before the bridge and the bridge itself is a touch narrower than the road on either side of it. If the driver had negotiated that bridge and in less than a KM this happened, goes to show how even a few seconds of sleepy eyes on a night drive on a highway can be disastrous.

[Gannu_1]

IMHO, no amount of under-run bar would have helped that Baleno. It rammed the rear of the tanker at a good speed, the tanker just moved ahead by a few meters! Talk about the conservation of momentum we had learnt back in our school days!

RIP all the four souls. In a way, it was good the respective spouses also expired; it would have been agonisingly painful for them otherwise.