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-   -   XUV500: Severe crash, but not a single airbag deployed (driver injured) (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/200186-xuv500-severe-crash-but-not-single-airbag-deployed-driver-injured-24.html)

So who is appointing Dealers? Does Mahindra operate a Factory owned workshop where people get their accidental cars repaired? Every dealership is trained and supposed to escalate serious issues to Factory and if they are not doing their Job, Mahindra first needs to fire such a dealership. Though I seriously doubt that Dealership would have kept this incident to their own level and it's anybody's guess what happened as OP is not able to answer.

Maybe the chain of events has lead to such a situation where OP no longer trusts the dealership or the manufacturer- fair, but what should Mahindra do- just issue a statement asking for the car or should they instead try to cajole the OP and get the car for investigation?


Remember, people bought this car at first place due to their wishes, they felt safe seeing Mahindra publicising 6 Airbags and all that. ANyone buying an XUV after going this thread will indeed be a very courageous person. I can PM you an internal office memo, two of our sales guys wanted to upgrade from their 4 - 5-Year-old Ertigas and had finalised XUV as they could not find anything more VFM. After I sent them this link, both backed out and are now considering other vehicles.


To make an estimate of such repairs in itself would be a work of many days if not weeks during which time I believe, OP must have tried to get in touch with Mahindra asking explanation on airbags and Mahindra guys must have simply sat on the complaint. The dealer had even such an audacity to ask for Parking charges as they would have like to pressure OP to get it repaired quickly. Now after this incident has taken a limelight, Mahindra wants the car back? Why don't they tell for how long the car was with their dealer and what were the finding of the dealer?

:OTYes, because I only recollect that incident, I will suggest opening a new thread on this Toyota episode, we should not mix the sins of others here. Two wrongs never make One Right.

Totally agree with this. The thread was about whether the airbags should have deployed on the XUV. Now it is about other manufacturers might be as bad as Mahindra

Should the same be not applied in this case?

Though, I have mentioned few posts back that despite not wearing seat-belt I have seen a case where the airbags were deployed [in an XUV].

I doubt we might get a reply from Mahindra, they might copy Ford on this. As far as consumer interest goes, all manufacturers put it in back burner, thanks to our lenient laws.

Dear Sdp,

You don't get it. We don't want any comparison between different manufacturers and opinions from unknown experts. All we want is replies from Mahindra to Arvind's questions. This will help in incident investigation and if Mahindra is innocent then it will help stop the social media outrage against them. When you constantly share examples of other cars where airbags haven't deployed (without any knowledge of whether the seatbelts were worn) or quote unknown experts you're only serving to confuse not resolve the queries.

If you read Arvind's posts, he had mentioned that he had tweeted to the big boss immediately after the accident and he has only been blown around since then.

As a responsible forum let us please stick to the facts of this case and let us all use our good offices at Mahindra to get them to share the requested data so that an independent impartial investigation can take place.

Hello guys,

In my humble opinion, this discussion has degenerated to a level where no amount of logic, reasoning and facts are enough. Arguments are being given for the sake of arguments and pieces of my responses are being twisted out of shape and taken out of context to generate new irrelevant debates. It is fast becoming a huge drain on my energy to keep on responding to a lot of inconsequential comments.

I have said it somewhere on this forum - "I have a self-imposed 5 posts limit while explaining something. If in those 5 posts, if I am not able to get the other party to see the point, neither the next 50 nor the next 500 posts would suffice because the real problem is most likely somewhere else. You can not make someone understand something if he/she doesn't want to understand".

I am WAY beyond the 5 post limit in this thread. So I am going to summarize what I have said till now in this final post from my side and then bow out of the discussion.

• I do not know how exactly the accident happened. There is a sketchy third-person account of what happened. That account and the pics are not enough for me to come to any conclusion about what exactly happened , why and what was the root cause. Therefore, I have no personal opinion in this case. I am not from any domain related to automobiles and is a humble user of the products that the develop. So I do not have any professional opinion about the case as well.
• To the best of my knowledge, there has not been any proper formal investigation done in this case by any authority. So I do not understand the basis (besides common sense) which a lot of members have come to the conclusion about the root-cause and have blamed the car-model and the manufacturer. I found this jumping to conclusion completely unfair.
• Just like many people, I used my common sense and whatever limited knowledge I have about automobiles to understand the pictures of the accident. I felt, the damage was visibly quite severe and my gut-feel said the airbags should have deployed. With my limited understanding, I tried to find a reason why the airbags didn't deploy, but couldn't. Team-BHP has a lot of intelligent people with deep knowledge and I was hoping that I could find some logical explanation in some post buried in this thread. But looks like its not a simple open-and-shut case and there are no simple explanations.
• This led me to reach out to Sanjeev who I knew from my earlier interactions as someone who seems to have more technical depth (as compared to the average Joe) in automotive related areas. He has never claimed he is an expert in automotive industry or airbags or crash investigation. I have not claimed that he is an expert. I have shared his credentials and his insights (without changing a single word) based on the pics and the accident description from the thread. Each one of you is free to decide whether Sanjeev's observations and insights are meaningful and credible. I personally found the observations logical. I have not claimed that everyone should take Sanjeev's observation as the ultimate truth and I still believe that a proper investigation by a competent authority is necessary.
• When the discussion came to XUV having 2 crash-sensors at the front and possibly none was hit with enough force to trigger the airbags, someone claimed that its a serious design flaw. I shared multiple well-documented examples of frontal crashes with poles/trees from this very forum where the front airbags did not deploy due to a similar number and placement of front-crash sensors. This was done to show that its a very common design practice across various segments of cars in India. I have never claimed that just because it happens in other vehicles as well, its OK that it happens with the XUV. I never take that line in any of my arguments. Whether this supposedly common practice is a design flaw or not, I am no expert and I will leave that to the real design experts.
• When someone cited Toyota as an example (among others) of "how quickly the manufacturer learnt from the mistakes and made changes", I felt it was necessary to point to 89 deaths, consistent denial by Toyota for years together, multiple class-action suits and billions of dollars in settlement to dispel the misconception. That discussion is completely irrelevant to the case being discussed and should be just noted and ignored.
• I do own a Mahindra XUV. People who have followed my ownership thread and people who know me personally know that I maintain a strictly professional relationship with Mahindras as a manufacturer. There have been enough instances of both ... "pat on the back" (for a a job well done) as well as "kick in the butt" (for goofing up in maintenance/repairs and even product shortcomings). So irrespective of certain people claiming my views as "brand-patriotism", I do believe I have been completely neutral about Mahindras in this thread. Just think about it - me or any other owner blindly supporting Mahindras in this case is actually suicidal because in case there is indeed a flaw in the vehicle, tomorrow it could be me or some other owner in the hospital (or in the morgue).
• I do wish a proper investigation is soon carried out in this case and the root-cause is found and action taken on the people/organizations at fault. Looking forward to a speedy recovery for Madhav and wish all the best to Arvind for the legal battle ahead.

I want to ask one question, are there airbags present in A-pillar of the XUV?

And do crumple zones have any role to play in triggering the airbag?

No, theres no airbag in A pillars.

Whatever happened to arvindb4?
No news from him or about his son. Is anyone in touch with him? Hope things are fine at his end. He has suddenly gone silent.

If anyone is in touch with him, please update this thread

Very well said and summarised.

My inference from this whole discussion is that some manufacturers (like Ford) prefer to err on the side of caution and their software triggers safety nets for more scenarios than what is standard practice of other manufactures. These standards are probably set lower for India.

Most people here feel that Mahindra is at fault for not having higher standards, and rightly so.

As for a solution out; isn't anyone capable of downloading the sensor data and sending it to an international agency for analysis. This can be done under the supervision of both the parties.

Well said. There are so many vendors that can increase the torque and bhp of diesel cars. I am sure they are capable of downloading the data and sending it for analysis.

I'm in touch with him, although not frequently. He is occupied with the treatment for Madhav. Some time back he had told, Madhav is undergoing speech evaluation and therapy at the hospital.

Talking with him, I'm amazed at the grit, composure and resilience this man shows, at this point in time.

I think from 19 August, he should be eligible to post again.

Spike

Dear SDP

Let us keep the front airbag deployment aside for now. I believe the vehicle in question is equipped with side / curtain airbags. Given the fact that the driver side door has deformed to such an extent that there is intrusion into the cabin, shouldn't the side / curtain airbags have been deployed? If the sensors are placed lower down the door, or the software / algorithm did not think it fit to deploy the airbag, does it not point to a design defect on the part of the Mahindras ? Surely they cannot hide behind 'the airbag is designed by someone else'. If that's the case, it should be sold seperately.

EDIT :- Sanjeev's claim - 'the sensors / crash bar area is not deformed', to me, seems to point out that the software / algorithm is defective as in it does not / is not capable of sensing impact anywhere else that at the exact point where the sensor is installed.

Edit 2 :- In my humble opinion (I'm no expert on this), if such a badly damaged door does not trigger the side / curtain airbag, they might as well not have a sensor there.

After going through the posts once again, I can only draw one conclusion. Unless there is evidence how the accident occurred and whether the occupants were belted up or not, and a forensic examination of the vehicle and the accident spot, I cannot draw a conclusion one way or the other as a judge.

I think the thread has outlived its purpose. Unless the impasse is broken it won't make sense to continue debating over this topic anymore.

Keeping aside whether Indian manufacturers take safety as seriously as some other global manufacturers, I think the manufacturer has not been given a fair chance to present its case. So the arguments have become completely lopsided, to the point of becoming manufacturer bashing.

I don't want to take sides and I don't want to hold anyone guilty, till both sides have been given a chance to present their respective cases. We have heard the victim's side of the story and that too not the first hand account. No panchnama, FIR copy, nothing.

We have heard the manufacturer's response and since they have been denied access to thw vehicle, that response will only be a standard marketing response.

I for one am not inclined to particularly favour one party over the other.

Request mods to please close the thread.

In a way, Mahindra is in a no-win situation.
As SDP said, it may well have been within design parameters.

However, there are 2 areas where I believe it is reasonable to bash Mahindra:
1. The media blitz which said "Mahindra is such a great company...see it is doing this..." I at least found that extremely crass.
2. It seems Arvind had asked for some data on design and performance parameters of their safety systems. If they were actually willing to be transparent, they would have shared the data. Again, a caveat, I do not know how specific his request was and how much he could follow up given his situation, but at least a response should have come.

...and I'd request everyone to reconsider on this request.

Our forum has been the single biggest channel for a despairing father to reach out to the world and share his pain and frustration. Let us not cut him off from this link.
He'll be back soon on 19th (Thanks Spike) and hopefully we'll hear more from him then, both about Madhav and the case.

Until then, let's all remind ourselves to not repeat opinions and points that have already been made, only contribute new developments or research on the subject and keep Madhav in our prayers and hearts.