[vijith]

Congratulations to Mahindra for developing safer vehicles and for giving importance to Safety first.

Honestly, I never expected Mahindra Thar to be a well built vehicle and score 4stars in GNCAP .
This is the right step Mahindra is taking and even though the overall (all models) sales maybe way below the market leader, Safety is what all customers should be choosing over mileage or other aspects.

Mahindra and TATA would eventually win the hearts of Indian customers in the long run when some minor issues are sorted out soon.
When Maruti Suzuki is advertising "Dil Se" caption , this is what Indian customers need in reality.

Hope more and more safer cars and vehicles will be developed by all manufacturers in future.

[rageshgr]

Originally Posted by shancz

Exactly and just to be fair it was VW who led from the front when it launched the Polo with dual airbags and ABS at 4.99 lacs ex showroom in 2014 eventually followed suit by others. They pretty much junked the argument made by other manufacturers then about the "price issues" involved in a market like ours. Also noting that it was in addition to the Polo being the strongest platform then, in that segment. VW got my respect.

Exactly. In 2015 when I was hunting for my next car, safety was my #1 priority. The Polo came out in flying colors. Safety features provided in the GT TSI was unheard of in that segment then and so I am a happy GT TSI owner for 5 years now. And yes glad to know that others are also catching up. Hightime all manufacturers did that.

[Napalm]

Originally Posted by GTO

You can't cruise in one at 120 kmph all day long because it can't handle an emergency manouveur well or even a sudden road dip at that speed. Best to drive safe & easy in a purpose-built offroader . 100 - 110 kmph is the max that I'd recommend.

Slightly , but this begs the question:
Why are the electronic speed limiters only applied to cabs in India and personal cars only have over-speeding reminder when the highway speed limits are at max, 80 on highways, 120 on some expressways?

If safety is important enough to mandate standard ABS/Driver-Airbags in cars, if our highways are not designed for safe travel above the set speed limits, if the speed-limiters are for that purpose, then why is every passenger car not equipped with a speed limiter at 120Kph?

This is something that always bugs me. Is there any logic here? Or the govt just doesn’t want to annoy the car buyers with speed limiters? Because the over-speeding reminders too can be very irritating while driving above 80 & 120 Kph.

[sarav100]

Originally Posted by Napalm

Slightly , but this begs the question:
Why are the electronic speed limiters only applied to cabs in India and personal cars only have over-speeding reminder when the highway speed limits are at max, 80 on highways, 120 on some expressways?

If safety is important enough to mandate standard ABS/Driver-Airbags in cars, if our highways are not designed for safe travel above the set speed limits, if the speed-limiters are for that purpose, then why is every passenger car not equipped with a speed limiter at 120Kph?

This is something that always bugs me. Is there any logic here? Or the govt just doesn’t want to annoy the car buyers with speed limiters? Because the over-speeding reminders too can be very irritating while driving above 80 & 120 Kph.

I believe setting hard limit at 120 kmph has it's own challenges, especially considering the diversity of our country. Lets say a person has to travel due to some emergency on unknown road/ state highway which does not witness much traffic during night. There are certain areas in our country where robbers are active on such highways and if robbers start chasing that person on such roads, he'll be at the mercy speed limiter while robbers catch up with him and stop him eventually.

Hence, beep sound seems to be the solution here wherein beep reminds a person that they are exceeding safe speeds while giving him room to speed further, if necessary in a scenario.

At the same time, I would also like to state that the same scenario might be applicable for commercial vehicles as well and setting a hard limit at 80 kmph for them seems like a short sighted vision to me. Maybe implementation of 120 kmph beep sound for commercial vehicles at 80 kmph should have been done for them instead of the 80 kmph hard limit.

[superguy282]

Originally Posted by Napalm

Slightly , but this begs the question:
Why are the electronic speed limiters only applied to cabs in India and personal cars only have over-speeding reminder when the highway speed limits are at max, 80 on highways, 120 on some expressways?
If safety is important enough to mandate standard ABS/Driver-Airbags in cars, if our highways are not designed for safe travel above the set speed limits, if the speed-limiters are for that purpose, then why is every passenger car not equipped with a speed limiter at 120Kph?
This is something that always bugs me. Is there any logic here? Or the govt just doesn’t want to annoy the car buyers with speed limiters? Because the over-speeding reminders too can be very irritating while driving above 80 & 120 Kph.

Apart from the points told by @sarav100, A private passenger vehicle can be taken anywhere, i.e on private properties where speed limits aren't there at all (Whereas commercial vehicles are less likely to be taken on private properties for any sort of speed testing or thrill of sorts).

Another thing that I personally believe is that private vehicle drivers are less likely to speed as they usually go at their own pace and do not have a customer that needs to reach at a specific time. (However I admit that a considerable amount of private vehicle drivers do speed).

In all I think the government should cap speed at 120/140 and set a speed beep at 90/100 kmph.

[locusjag]

Originally Posted by Napalm

Slightly , but this begs the question:
Why are the electronic speed limiters only applied to cabs in India and personal cars only have over-speeding reminder when the highway speed limits are at max, 80 on highways, 120 on some expressways?

This is something that always bugs me. Is there any logic here?

Back in my days of driving in the US interstate highways, one principle that every driver would follow even under the eyes of cops was to keep up with the speed of traffic. Even in a narrow highway with a 55 mph limit, if everyone were doing 75 mph, I would also run with everyone else at 75 mph simple because I would cause an accident by going slow at 55 mph. I drove over there for 4.5 years by following this principle and never had a speeding ticket.

This underscores the fact that one's speed by itself means only so much; it is one's speed versus the speed of everyone else around you that has a greater impact on safety.

[RaghuVis]

Originally Posted by Napalm

Why are the electronic speed limiters only applied to cabs in India and personal cars only have over-speeding reminder when the highway speed limits are at max, 80 on highways, 120 on some expressways?

I am sure no one in government looks at team-bhp site else they would have got numerous ideas to save auto industry as well as increase safety, but I sincerely hope no one in power reads your message and thinks of implementing because this is nothing short of a unique idea and government these days adopt only unique ideas.

[abnormalspirit]

Thar 2020 has a much better rating than kia seltos, even better than jeep wrangler.

[Napalm]

Originally Posted by ObsessedByFIAT

Excellent effort by Mahindra!! They deserve a pat on thier back!
All these so called number 1's and 2's of this world should feel ashamed.
Off late, TATA and Mahindra have upped the game

Originally Posted by klgiridhar

3. All future launches from Mahindra will have at least 4 star safety rating.

decision to have 4 stars as minimum made it quite an engineering feat to achieve for their engineers it seems, given the weight and other constraints in place.

the load absorption will be almost equivalent between chassis and body, say in XUV300 but here more than 75% is absorbed by the chassis alone, which, he said, was quite difficult to achieve.

Originally Posted by TAHR

Nothing short of incredible, for Mahindra to have pulled off this commendable feat on a non-luxury, body-on-frame, off-road vehicle. It speaks volumes for their commitment to safety and solid engineering

Lots of people mentioning & appreciating Mahindra (& Tata) for engineering their cars with top of the line crash safety.

This is indeed an incredible engineering feat accomplished by the 2 INDIAN OEMs in the body-on-frame,off-road & low-cost hatchback segments. All this while the global OEMs in India like Suzuki, Hyundai,Kia (& even Toyota with Glanza) keep cribbing & giving excuses that India is a price-sensitive market and it is difficult to provide cars with global standards of safety at affordable prices in India( don’t even get me started on brake issues on Creta/Seltos or the insane price of Seltos/Sonet ).

So I believe it is time to create a new expression “Indian engineering” & start using it in terms of crash-safety & cost in our country, just like the term “German Engineering” is used all over the world.
Just wanted to put this out there and couldn’t resist posting it here.

[kamilharis]

This news was " Shocking & Unbelievable " for me in a good way!

Congrats M&M for this achievement , that too on a ladder on frame. Hope the same will reflect in the results of next gen XUV500 and Scorpio as well.

Enough has been said about our TATA and M&M , but sorry it is impossible to keep quite dear Suzuki-Hyundai tin cans.

[Cresterk]

Originally Posted by abnormalspirit

Thar 2020 has a much better rating than kia seltos, even better than jeep wrangler.

I keep seeing people repeating that it scored higher than the Wrangler and while I love seeing our Indian brands rise up and don't particularly care for the jeep brand, it would be prudent to note that the Thar scored 4 stars in the global ncap while the wrangler scored 1 star in the Euro ncap.

https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/wrangler/34192

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnlxAVeVt_U

Both of these are very different, with the Euro NCAP testing for a myriad of advanced and niche things such as the damage to pedestrians and bicyclists upon impact, autonomous braking and lane keep assist to name a few.

Meanwhile, the global NCAP is a charity organisation that tests cars for developing markets because testing them on the euro NCAP standards would just lead to a whole lot of 0-1 stars which aren't exactly useful since there is a pretty big difference between a 0 star maruti tin can and a 0 star something else. Using a very small number of 0-5 to rate anything will lead to a lot of variation at the top and bottom ends even though they would have the same rating of either 0 or 5.

So while this is a unexpectedly good result for our market, we shouldn't be dragging the wrangler into this at all since it is highlighting our ignorance and would just lead to amused reactions from anyone knowledgeable; ranging from a raised eyebrow from the polite crowd or outright mockery from the more juvenile crowd on the international stage.

[Nanolover]

A very informative ( although quite old) video on crash test, body loading and footwell intrusion. The fundamental is same even now.

Only speed, testing instrumentation etc have gone up.

https://youtu.be/G-cKOoiYxrk

[Rohan265]

Came across this today:

https://indianexpress.com/article/ci...puram-7812894/

The car is said to have crashed into a divider. My guess is that a narrow overlap of the divider impact has probably bypassed the energy-absorbing members.

Goes to show that a good NCAP rating may not be enough. More importantly, crash tests should be designed for the Indian condition. Our cars are more likely to hit narrow dividers than other cars, which is something that the NCAP tests.

P.S: I am not sure if this post applies to this thread or it should be moved to "Accidents in India". I apologize for any infringement.