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-   -   Safety last? Maruti Chairman Mr. R.C. Bhargava's controversial statements (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/157597-safety-last-maruti-chairman-mr-r-c-bhargavas-controversial-statements-28.html)

I've never understood this trend of bashing RC Bhargava for simply telling inconvenient truths.

Need I remind folks, that the Maruti Brezza is a 4-star safety rated car. One entire star more than the much more expensive Hyundai Creta! So Maruti can and does provide safety in their premium models.

It's only the entry level Maruti's that got poor ratings. That's fine. The purpose of those cars is to be a safer yet affordable alternative for 2-wheeler riders.

Hyundai-Kia are not only making unsafe cars, but are making unreliable ones too. The recent fuel pump fiasco on the i20 N line is a very good example of a car being unsafe and unreliable at the same time.

Not too mention the pathetic paint quality of their cars since ages. All this along with multiple teething issues and a poor image in the Middle East have done enough to put me off these two brands.

I feel rather proud about the fact that nobody in my friend circle or family owns a Hyundai-Kia and I hope the status quo remains for years to come.

Exactly my thoughts! This guy has a habit of digressing from the issue of Maruti's incompetence and lack of seriousness towards safety, by putting the entire blame on taxation and laws. Tata provides 4-star rated Tiago at cheaper price than the Swift which performed miserably, but still Maruti's top management don't have even an iota of shame. I believe we Bhpians should stop giving such nonsense comments any more importance.

:OT Someone here called GNCAP a UK organisation running on charities from manufacturers rl:.

Exactly, the proposed Bharat NCAP is an exact carryover of the 2022 GNCAP protocol, so atleast in phase 1, there is no India specific addition.

This statement is made quite often to delay such legislation, however how can they say that a frontal offset test, side impact test, pole impact test, ESP, etc. are not relevant in India ? In fact we should be adding more types of crash test like more severe pedestrian impact tests, animal impact test, etc !

Take a look at the accident statistics published by MoRTH - 60% of road fatalities happen on highways, even though they account for just 5% of our total road network (Link)

The NCAP tests which is world standard is a well established starting point and if not anything, our test speeds need to be higher considering how rules and limits are ignored in India.

I feel his comments are not addressing(diverting from) the actual issue -
Why most of the Maruti Suzuki cars have poor ratings in GNCAP while some others like TATA or Mahindra are able to get decent ratings.

Why is he trying to blame GNCAP (They are the ones who are responsible for creating an awareness of crash safety ratings in our country)

I believe that he needs to accept the reality and improve his efforts on the safety aspect of his cars(which he is in control of) rather than shifting the blame on some other things which are not in his control(Poor driving licence procedures/Vehicle condition/Road conditions etc.).

Hi Lowflyer23,

You can directly counter my comment and I have no issues with that. I'd always prefer to stand corrected when proven wrong, no egos here.

Also feel free to report my post to the mods if you feel it's misinformation, not a fact, name calling, age shaming or defamatory in nature.

P.S: I do not have any role/vested interests in Maruti or am I in any position to influence membership approval or infraction processes here on the forum.

So the other day I was designing the intermediate case of a Trent engine. We developed some software to automate some of the design processes. That software wasn't working well with the new version of NX. We went to the customer and told him that nothing is wrong with the software itself, only the inputs to the software need to be tweaked to the requirements of new version of NX. He said one thing -

If nothing is wrong with your software, and only the inputs need to be tweaked - it seems like a simple thing to do and prove. So just change the inputs and show me the results, I'll give approval after that.

Similarly, regardless of whether GNCAP is a sham charitable organisation or a legitimate organization, Maruti can very easily make their cars compatible to their standards if they wanted to. Others are able to do it at the same price point, why not Maruti?

Mr Bhargava has stated the reality and hit the nail on the head as far as actual safety is concerned.

I am surprised that there so much mirth and criticism at his statement that prevention of accidents comes first. Lot of his critics seem to think that prevention doesn't matter. It is what happened to a car when it is hit that matters. This is just like says, you don't care that your kid get flu and this expose your kid to all manner of unhygienic conditions..what matters is that the pharma companies manufacture drugs that kill the virus or protect the kid from the virus.

My sense is that this is because of the responsibility that the prevention of accidents places on two key stakeholders - firstly the government and secondly and more importantly is drivers. In my opinion I am surprised that GNCAP is quite silent on these two critical aspect because of it is really sincere about saving lives these are the biggest components that matter. As long as they don't do that Mr. Bhargava's comment that they serve vested interests does seem to hold some water.

And more interestingly there is no additional messaging about safe driving practices from our Indian stars Tata and Mahindra while they lose no opportunity to Tom Tom the ncap ratings of their cars.

Perhaps instead of bragging about the ncap stars of our cars we should start by bragging about how consistently we follow safe driving practices beginning with using indicators and watching our mirrors. Driving to and from Bangalore over the weekend I was extremely disappointed as how threadbare basic road markings were on our highways let alone unscientific and plain dangerous construction. Let's focus on the basics first rather that allow some holier than thou NGO that selectively picks and choses its agenda. Compared to that the state highways in Kerala are fantastic to drive on at night, not because our govt is good but because the IMF releases loans earmarking an amount for safety marking and installations and used to verify it before releasing the next tranche. Compared to that the NHAI road markings in the same state are pathetic.

All of Mr Bhargava's utterances made sense in the India i live in, including that of airbags. Remember the statistic than 65% of drivers do not wear it correctly. This is also a fact brought out in the Mistry crash...surely you cannot get safer than a Merc.

I would also like to challenge any BHPian to tell me that we feel roads are safer in the West because of ncap rated cars and not because of their driving discipline and sfaety oriented road infrastructure.

Thanks,
Shibu.

Nobody is saying that he is wrong in what he said. He is right, but at the same time conveniently dodging the elephant in the room. Maruti cannot do anything about road conditions and driver behaviour. That's the responsibility of the government. But maruti's responsibility is in designing cars that will be safe for where they are intended to be used. This makes NCAP ratings even more important for a country like India where nobody follows the traffic rules. Sure, it would be nice to have perfect roads and perfect drivers. But that cannot happen overnight. Mr. Bhargava cannot just pass the blame and absolve maruti of its responsibilities towards its customers.

While it is good that he is making noise against the bad infra and bad driving skills of Indians, he is doing it with vested interests.

Now, where does NCAP stand in this? NCAP = New Car Assessment Program. They are a car assessment group, not a road or driver assessment group. They make sure cars are road-worthy for the roads they are driven on.

Now you are dodging the issue here. The fundamental question is what is the objective or what should be the objective. The objective should be to make the road safer. It cannot be answered by "he won't listen so there is not point". Because in the case of road safety making the car safer is only going to drive up costs with very little impact on road safety.

If NCAP wants to conveniently chose a narroow aspect of safety that hardly impacts the prolific nature of accidents then i think they should stop it entirely.

Drive on,
Shibu

Just goes to show how good he is at distracting the aam janta by saying obvious things by shoving his own follies under the carpet. :D

Nobody is denying what he said is logical. It is rather obvious. But why is he dodging his own responsibilities. We are in this situation because of the typical blame game that our babus play and he is no different.

And people comparing Hyundai and Kia - you are absolutely right. They make unsafe cars too but that still does not give Maruti a free pass. Would request them to head to the new (buying a used) Kia Seltos thread which received an astounding 35% of the votes (95 bhpians) where people still think they can buy a used Seltos despite the safety issues. Also, in this forum, we still openly talk about getting rid of the 80kmph/120kmph chimes (illegally?) which are mandated by the government. Why? because the sound is annoying. That just shows that we are okay with what we are being offered and safety is not really a priority. Not even for some of us 'bhpians'.

Simple question is, Why should they?
Why GNCAP?
Is GNCAP as an organization anything like the EuroNCAP or IIHS where pioneers of safety manufacturers like Volvo send their cars for testing?

Who audits GNCAP?Who are they associated with and accountable to? Why are their interests centred around India and Africa alone? Who audits them? What's global about them?

Why should someone be trolled or ridiculed for asking these questions or anything else on the lines?

I agree on this point with you. Often an excuse is given by traffic department that they don't have sufficient manpower to monitor traffic and enforce rules. I don't understand this, whey can't they simply recruit more people and start enforcement? collection of fines from the large population of Un-abiding drivers/rider alone would be sufficient to finance the whole bunch of cops in every city and on Highways. With the increasing numbers of cars/bike on roads we definitely need more people to enforce traffic rules.

Towards Zero Foundation on its website mentions 5 pillars of road safety. Which is a UN road safety program. Towards Zero Foundation is the charitable organisation that does GNCAP tests for India and Africa.

Src:https://www.towardszerofoundation.org/our-organisation


RCBhargava's contention seems to be not addressing the issues that need to be addressed at Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 and directly going for Pillar 3. Go through the attached PDF documents for information on five pillars road safety plan.

This is what the GNCAP website has to say in the 'about' section in its footer. As Jalex77 has mentioned.




It is indeed important to know about the organisation of any entity when analysing what it does and its influence on any other organisation or people's lives.

Source