[Neil Roy]

First off, I think a little bit of courtesy and empathy has to be shown to the OP. He has come to our forum to get justice/closure and we have a moral obligation to find the truth as it might be one of us tomorrow. Accusing the OP of playing the emotional card is downright distasteful. After all, our forum has fought for the underdog many a time and even brought automotive giants to the negotiating table. The OP is entitled to be emotional as he is the grieved party here. Mahindra has to take the initiative to be transparent here with their findings as the whole forum is watching them. As an unbiased observer and a person who has survived a horrific head on crash with a bus on a Mahindra bolero and lived, I will be definitely interested in getting to the bottom of this.
M & M, I hope you are reading this. I have test driven your latest XUV only yesterday even after reading this thread in the hope that you will be honest and transparent in your findings. Accidents do happen to the best of car manufacturers but that does not absolve your responsibility when lives are at stake and there's a lot that has to be clarified from you.

[joe_antony]

Originally Posted by risham

4. A sensor is not designed to detect changes at its own location. It is engineered (design and placement) to detect changes at the place of use of the equipment it controls. This would imply that irrespective of the placement of an airbag sensor, it has to be engineered to deploy the airbag when occupants are in danger. Else, to take it to an extreme, the sensor for airbag can be placed on the underbody in dead centre of car and a disclaimer placed in the manual that the airbag may not deploy if that spot is not under impact. How useful.

+1. Exactly what I wanted to write, every word of it. All I want is the airbag to deploy when there is a need for it and it did not happen, a product failure, Period.

[RaghuVis]

I have been trying very hard not to reply on this thread all these days as I have nothing constructive to say other than wish get well soon to Madhav. But seeing some post in the last few pages really hurts me. I don't get why people can be so casual in saying that OP is just emotional. I do hope none of your close ones get into such situation for you to realize the power of Emotion. Justice, that too speedy justice is important but what is the use of such justice if emotions are not given any value. Yes, we want to know what happened. We want to know the full details. But I have truck loads of patience because this has to happen in a pace which should be set by only one guy and that is Arvind. If he wishes to have a third party investigation, get in line friends because that is what we also should ask for. Is that such a illogical demand?

As someone suggested, the only help right now we can do is to ensure we support his cause. All the XUV/Mahindra owners, please reach out to your respective SA, respective dealership , respective RM's and ask them to help in getting Mahindra an independent probe for this accident. we need to make noise. Fair noise in this case. World's move when we stand united. Please do this so that there are no new thread opened by your father/mother/son/daughter mentioning about the same fault.

For those who own any other car, be it Mahindra or Non Mahindra ones, we know their twitter accounts, we know their FB pages, we know their mail ID's. send out a tweet, put a post, send out a mail. What are we going to lose. Also, can someone please raise a petition in change.org and circulate. My laptop blocks advocacy group websites so cannot raise. Once raised, I can sign them using mobile as that is easy.

Arvind, Since you are not new to Team-bhp, you are very well aware the support this forum can give you. please reach out to any of us. we will do anything that is humanely possible to help you.

[Guite]

Why are we putting so much pressure on Arvind to respond fast to our queries? Does he owe it to us? Just because he posted a problem here, and we offered advises, does it mean he owe us speedy resolution to what is essentially his problem? I don’t think he owe it to us. Maybe there is a different level of general internet forum etiquette which I am not aware of. As for me, I look forward to his updates, but at the same time I understand it is his prerogative whether and when to post updates. Let’s give him breathing space.

[V.Narayan]

Folks I spoke to Arvind at length today. He has expressed his thanks to all those members who have shown concern and empathy in this troublesome and tragic situation. Arvind is tied up as you can imagine with the care and rehabilitation of his son who needs extensive occupational therapy and speech therapy to get back even to a fraction of normalcy where he can talk, read and perform basic functions independently. Given the lack of high end medicare in India for such brain injuries the situation is quite hard on the family. I know from direct personal experience with two immediate relatives, for whom my wife and I have been caretakers, how physically and emotionally exhausting this can be for the family and how the bulk of the burden of the rehabilitation exercises fall on the family in India.

After going through the sequence of events as explained by Arvind on a day by day basis I would request all to hold their judgement. Arvind will be taking care of what he puts down on the thread as M&M's lawyers will be waiting to juice out every sentence. That's just the way large corporations behave. Let not their suave twitter image fool us.

My assessment of the situation I will resist the temptation of sharing at this stage.

Given that India is now one of the largest auto markets in the world I believe what Team BHP may want to consider spearheading is that -
(1) we have an independent investigative & research body, in India, that can assess such situations and that is not funded by auto OEMs;
(2) Auto manufacturers should be required to display publicly (website?) their safety certificates so obfuscation and stonewalling is avoided - in the aviation industry [that other big passenger carrier] safety and license certifications by OEMs, by Regulators, by MROs are all public and on the net.

It is my belief, which I have squarely explained to Arvind, that his opponents' objective is to wear him out with time, effort and expenditure.

M&M are working hard to break into the American market. God forbid if this incident had happened in America, where courts and prosecution systems work, I wonder if their attitude, speed and co-operation would have been different.

My humble request would be that we refrain from casting aspersions on the author of the thread or, till more facts are known, lambasting M&M. What has occurred could happen to us or our loved ones tomorrow and I suspect our experience with all OEMs in India (or most at least) would be similar.

[VKumar]

I won't go on to say that some are favoring Mr. Arvind and some are against or if I am disheartened or someone has hurt my sentiments or anything like that

Okay, so someone has been telling us that Mr. Arvind has been giving every post an emotional angle. Well, Team-BHP exists only because we have an emotional angle attached to our rides. We take leave to bring them home and we say them goodbye with teary eyes

Some people are disturbed with delay in response and some want to understand technicalities. Well, I won't say God forbid kind of statements and will simply request them at least not add more pain to the life of a hapless father, looking at Madhav multiple times a day is enough to give him the pain. With the response of Mahindra, it is well proven that the accident has happened, airbags haven't deployed and his son is in a critical state. I don't want any more information; at least until I am someone who can leave my work, visit him personally or at least call him and extend my help.

It is same Mahindra who once published a letter with nothing relevant and every single autoblogger and publishing house made sure that it reaches as far as possible. Then they saw that Team-BHP guys are still adamant, and they came with a more proper (still improper though) reply. Now we have the situation when the fire has started from within.

How I look at all this?
Mahindra guys are continuously monitoring this thread, they can gauge where the discussion is going and at what pace. Now, out of nowhere a few people feel that they should reply this thread (since years they didn't) and there gets the thread dissolved. Now, I request the members who favor Mr. Arvind to please refrain from posting the content that is deviated from the issue. Believe me, this is what Mahindra guys also want. Once the thread deviates from the core issue, it will turn into a pointless thread and mods will be forced to close this - THE END - Mahindra will win without fighting (I promise I didn't call anyone Vibhishana )


Let me quote myself once from my previous post:

Originally Posted by VKumar

My Point:

"If I have paid for something to work, it should work"

Anyone can come up and give 9999 excuses, if the airbags haven't deployed even at an impact this hard - this is an engineering failure. If these guys can't have airbags to deploy under very high sideways acceleration even without the sensors getting triggered, then they better mention it when they say that the car has six airbags.

Kindly look at these pictures of the Skoda Yeti of one of our fellow BHPians and compare the impact with that of the XUV in question:

Link to post: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-d...ml#post2798559

Now, I really don't want anyone to come up and say that airbags weren't needed in the Yeti's accident and it's a waste of money.
Or
Yeti has everything fine but the hit was solely at the airbag trigger point.

Well, how I see things is:
"An expensive car is expensive because fewer corners cut"
Maybe Mahindra saved costs by using lesser number of sensors or poor quality sensors or whatever.

Components like airbags should be over-engineered and over-engineering means they should work 999 times if the vehicle collides 999 different ways and there are 999 chances of death or grievous injury.

[AVL500]

Having been following this thread since beginning, have come across variety of opinion and I can say most have been positive in nature even if they wish to support the manufacturer or at least give benefit of doubt. However few recent posts I strongly feel were downright offensive and insensitive and I in my personal capacity would always refrain from such postings, given the situation Arvind ji is in right now, no matter how strongly I feel about it.

Someone gives a reference of their years of fuss free ownership experience, performance, mechanical reliability, stability, others say how they are in love with their vehicle and have always had a super experience be it the car itself or the ASS. But is this thread about any of the above. Most of us out here who own Tata's, Hyundai's, Honda's, Suzuki's, Fords, Mahindra's, Toyota's, Renault's, VWs etc totally love our vehicles, be it performance or ASS and never regret our decisions one bit. But is this about any of that. Most of us super-satisfied customers of our brands have only enjoyed the daily use-able functionality of our vehicles and will never be able to tell if a safety equipment will work as that is something which cannot be tested, it is just a matter of faith we have in what is advertised. What this is actually about is the fact that a safety equipment did not activate even under the circumstances as this ( Clearly evident from the pictures of the vehicle involved). And this could have been any manufacturer, and I am sure we would have been equally ferocious in our response no matter who it would have been.

Quite a few of us have lapped up the Mahindra side of story and their genuine intention to do a probe,they want to know the facts, what happened and what not and not come to any conclusion before that, whereas the actual and painful reality is, the Air Bags did not function when they should have. And strictly speaking only for myself, there are or could be only two reasons 1. Faulty Airbags ( Equipment failure ) or 2. Faulty design or placement of Sensors ( Engineering failure). But thinking that Mahindra would own upto either of the two is wishful thinking and hence any support for a probe with involvement of Mahindra is nothing less than an insult.

Hand this over to the manufacturer and I bet they would prove that this was an exceptional case where by providence none of the requirements to activate sensors were met and there is no fault in equipment or design.

I must say here again as many have already mentioned before me, Arvind Ji is absolutely right in rejecting any probe which involves Mahindra and we from our side at the very least can support him in his fight.

[Steeroid]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

My assessment of the situation I will resist the temptation of sharing at this stage.

Given that India is now one of the largest auto markets in the world I believe what Team BHP may want to consider spearheading is that -
(1) we have an independent investigative & research body, in India, that can assess such situations and that is not funded by auto OEMs;
(2) Auto manufacturers should be required to display publicly (website?) their safety certificates so obfuscation and stonewalling is avoided - in the aviation industry [that other big passenger carrier] safety and license certifications by OEMs, by Regulators, by MROs are all public and on the net.

This is the need of the hour. This is India's "Unsafe at any speed" moment.

[roy_libran]

Absolutely Right!

Mahindra's attempts as well as the attempts of many key social influencers has been to divert attention away from the deficient product and misleading advertising, to the process & procedure followed post the failure and the mechanics of the interactions.
The perception management exercise is easy that way, but personally, I feel, Mahindra would have partially redeemed themselves/himself, had they/he acknowledged unequivocally that the product failed when it shouldn't have and launched an effort to amend the product design to prevent any such repeat instance.
That forthrightness would have got some respect back to them, quite unlike the outcome of the deliberate attempted diversion.

Mr. Narayan in his post above, has provided excellent suggestions on how this forum can position itself to help improve the overall safety quotient of automobiles in India, but for that to happen, we'll need to introspect and rid ourselves of overt or covert biases.

[Jeevith]

Originally Posted by VKumar

Components like airbags should be over-engineered and over-engineering means they should work 999 times if the vehicle collides 999 different ways and there are 999 chances of death or grievous injury.

This is not how airbags are engineering, and no manufacturer claims/advertises that this is how they work. Airbags are by definition supplementary restrain systems. By your logic, an airbag should deploy in a bumper to bumper traffic incident where one car bumps into an another.

Glad that you used the number 999 (which I assume you mean is out of 1000). By which I assume you acknowledge the 0.1% possibility of something else other than the manufacturer's fault, which of course you (and a lot of the members here) have already concluded is not the case with this incident. How each of you came to that conclusion is IMHO based on bias / emotional reasons. Like I said earlier it's completely acceptable for OP to be emotional, but the rest of us should ideally be more logical and rational.

Originally Posted by roy_libran

The perception management exercise is easy that way, but personally, I feel, Mahindra would have partially redeemed themselves/himself, had they/he acknowledged unequivocally that the product failed when it shouldn't have and launched an effort to amend the product design to prevent any such repeat instance.

The product failed, airbags didn't deploy, that's not in dispute. But how does one "amend the product design" without knowing what's wrong in the first place (if there's even something wrong, which IMHO has not been proven)?

[roy_libran]

Originally Posted by Jeevith

The product failed, airbags didn't deploy, that's not in dispute. But how does one "amend the product design" without knowing what's wrong in the first place (if there's even something wrong, which IMHO has not been proven)?

The Root Cause Analysis, if triggered by the Company Top Management (TOP DOWN), need not be contingent on the evaluation of just one vehicle.
They can very well (if not already) commence -
- a third party audit of the design
- they can review other manufacturer vehicles' to understand how those are designed and why they operate as intended in a wider range of scenarios
- and can data-mine any patterns emerging from the plethora of crash data that they would have inherently collected from a multitude of accidents where airbags did and did not deploy

The above steps (and maybe few more) can lead them to what their design gap is, which can then be extrapolated with this particular crash data to see whether or not bridging that design/quality gap would have helped in this particular instance. This last step is where they actually need access. Basing their review solely on this vehicle would only lead to a partial, and potentially deficient solution (if any).

Hiding behind processes never leads to a better product - acknowledgement of failure and self-challenge does! I wish business schools, nowadays, taught this as well.

[longhorn]

Originally Posted by Jeevith

The product failed, airbags didn't deploy, that's not in dispute. But how does one "amend the product design" without knowing what's wrong in the first place (if there's even something wrong, which IMHO has not been proven)?

The first and second statements seem contradictory. Are you saying that there is nothing wrong even if the product failed or are you trying to say that Mahindra should be given access to the vehicle to see why the product failed even if there is no indication from their side that there could indeed be a problem.

[VKumar]

Originally Posted by Jeevith

This is not how airbags are engineering, and no manufacturer claims/advertises that this is how they work.

Dear Jeevith, I am sure that you got me wrong, hence let me help you by quoting myself by putting a few words in bold. I hope it will clear the picture:

Components like airbags should be over-engineered and over-engineering means they should work 999 times if the vehicle collides 999 different ways and there are 999 chances of death or grievous injury.

By your logic, an airbag should deploy in a bumper to bumper traffic incident where one car bumps into an another.

you ought to be joking man, let me help you again by re-quoting myself. I hope this clears the picture.

Components like airbags should be over-engineered and over-engineering means they should work 999 times if the vehicle collides 999 different ways and there are 999 chances of death or grievous injury.

Let me recite an indicent here, I was at SIAT (Symposium of Internation Automotive Technology) at ARAI in Pune for presenting a piece of research regarding chassis design andfor some meets regarding the EV technology. There was a very prominent professor from a highly rated institution presenting a research. At the end, I simply asked him to go back to a particular slide and asked him a question that was more stupid than 'stupid' itself. And what the wise man replied against my question was:

"Dear, asking the questions right after reading the first line itself shows your curiosity; but it is important for you to read till the end before trying to conclude"

By which I assume you acknowledge the 0.1% possibility of something else other than the manufacturer's fault

Aha, let me make yet another correction, that's 0.01% sirji!

The thing is that, when we talk about terms like over engineering, factor of safety etc; we try to make sure that failures are as less as possible. And it doesn't matter whose fault it was, if the airbags don't deploy in an accident of this intensity, the manufacturer is liable to give a valid explanation. Even if the driver was rash, then also airbags are supposed to deploy. In the situations where there is a probability of death or injury and the system failed in this case to do what it was supposed to. I never; in not a single post wrote that I blame Mahindra (Next line gets that). But, at the same time I doubt the component quality and the engineering gone into the product.

Arvind has given his money to Mahindra for additional protection and Mahindra has failed to deliver that when they were actually supposed to. Where is the scope of questions in this?

Look at the pictures of the Yeti in my previous post and look at the pictures of Arvind's car, the one on Team-BHP home page and the previous case of black XUV that aquaplaned and overturned - I SEE A HUGE DIFFERENCE, if you can't see then I can't help.


On the point of giving car's access to Mahindra:
What's wrong in giving the access to an independent third party? When Mahindra is asking for Arvind to co-operate, they can also do the same and help him in this process. Both parties can sit together and discuss the possibilities, I won't employ a cat to protect my milk bowl, will you?

Brand image and reputation is mostly managed by the BPR people and their short sightedness says that accepting the fault in open is going to damage the brand reputation - tell them to go and please study the Johnsons and Johnsons case of Tylenol medicine failure, it may help change their view point.

[nav2111]

Originally Posted by VKumar

Brand image and reputation is mostly managed by the BPR people and their short sightedness says that accepting the fault in open is going to damage the brand reputation - tell them to go and please study the Johnsons and Johnsons case of Tylenol medicine failure, it may help change their view point.

Or the Citicorp Center case from the late 70s. But I think you are expecting too much from them. Professional ethics is non existent in our country and absent the fear of punitive damages corporations will not change. The mistake (design flaw/poor engineering) has to become so expensive for them that they are forced to fix it. That is the only way.

[risham]

Originally Posted by Jeevith

The product failed, airbags didn't deploy, that's not in dispute.

Sir, Has Mahindra accepted that the product failed? I could not find that in the thread or Mahindra's reply. I would be grateful if you could please quote the relevant portion for me.


Because if they accept the liability that the product failed it is a big step forward and actually the first essential step. As only after accepting our shortcomings can we start the process of rectifying them for future begin.



regards