[msarunms1987]

While it may take years for this "appeal" to become a rule/policy, I think, this is probably one step ahead in the betterment of standards of cars in India.
I also agree with the points raised by other BHP'ians that a weak body (read it as monocoque chassis or the body that rests on frames) with any number of air-bags are no good.

The Government should also look at making the crash-test-rating a must for a car to make it into the market.

Yes, it is going to demand a stronger structural stability, more number of air bags, etc - resulting in higher costs. But at the same time, I am sorry! I would knowingly not want some unsafe car to be affordable for me.
After all, they say "Aim Higher". Let us stand together to make the cars as safe as they are in international markets.

[prajwalmr62]

Originally Posted by Starfire

So in short, people who can’t afford cars above 15 Lakh have no right to safety? Come on man, the VW Polo Trendline or the Tata Tiago XE are cheaper than the Swift Lxi, why aren’t VW or Tata compromising on build quality?

VW Polo starts at 7.5L in Bangalore where as Alto costs 3.7L. If you can afford a safer car, please choose the safer one. There's no rule to buy only MS cars. There are manufacturers who make safety their USP and deservedly getting good numbers yoy.

When you are trying to enforce a rule, you should look at the entire market. You just can't say Alto owners to buy Polo because it is safe car.

[Phantom 510]

Without a doubt 6 airbags is certainly a step towards the right direction. However, proper adjustable head restraints for the rear occupants should be made mandatory as well along with it. Most of the car makers offers proper rear head restraints in their top trims and there are some who gets their job done with neck rests kind of thing even in their top trims which is simply hilarious. A proper adjustable rear head restraint is worth in gold when things gets really out of the hand by minimising the fatal neck injuries caused by the whiplash effect.

[AirbusCapt]

Originally Posted by Akshay6988

Manufacturers will price their cars lower if there's is a tax which actually makes sense ! Almost 50% of any car's on road price amounts to the taxes you pay to the looters in the government. If taxes are reduced that will bring down prices of components, manufacturing and many more. That would also mean substantial increase in car demand as more people can afford the car. Right now, one has to pay road tax, registration tax, insurance and the manufacturer pays GST (which btw is eventually paid by the customer only). And on top of that, you also pay road tax on the fuel ! With this weird price sensitive car market, no manufacturer other than those backed by China will dare enter Indian market. Heck even Ford is on fence about it's India operations.
Kudos to Tata and Mahindra for giving well built safe cars for the prices at par with the other manufacturers. And shame on government for being far away from the reality.

If this government wants it can allocate 0.5/1% of vehicle tax collected as subsidy to adding better safety features. It will result in zero cost increase to the customer. Will they ever do this? The entire gameplan hinges on tax petrol, tax diesel, tax vehicles, tax on tolls, cess on tax, tax on tax. The end result of all these to the common man? A big zero.
Besides any sort of foolish mandate forcing safety on people will never work. To enforce any scheme the government needs to monetise it. Simply asking people to pay more for everything without an iota of benefits is lame.

[SideView]

Originally Posted by BoneCollector

Mr. Nitin Gadkari has urged the automobile manufacturers to increase the number of airbags to 6 as a standard fitment during his meeting with SIAM representatives. Understandably the cost will escalate but nevertheless it'll increase the safety level.

If govt really wanted to do it, they could have give some kind of rebate for 6 air bag variants to make it viable for manufacturers or make it mandatory so that all players are on a level playing field.

I really think this is just “social media” publicity stunt.

[Steelneo]

Originally Posted by Starfire

So in short, people who can’t afford cars above 15 Lakh have no right to safety? Come on man, the VW Polo Trendline or the Tata Tiago XE are cheaper than the Swift Lxi, why aren’t VW or Tata compromising on build quality?
Sorry to say but comments like these are what make Maruti Suzuki take the Indian masses for granted.

Every consumer need to be fully aware of car's build quality before making their choice of purchase. Yes additional airbag will save persons life. What will happen to the car if build quality is poor and thin sheet metal is used for outer panels. Looking at these images, the car owners must have spend big sum for repair. A solid build car would have survived.

[hsingh]

To implement this, the entire car industry in India has to go through a revolution with 50% of the existing models going out of sales. Because having 6 airbags need to have structural changes which involves R&D. Plus the mentality of we Indians where we give priority to low cost rather than safety. This change is welcome but implementation will definitely take time, change in the minds of people

[NerdSpeaks]

Originally Posted by Venkatesh

The Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, has urged carmakers in the country to standardise 6 airbags.

Attachment 2188137

Link

As the whole purpose of 6 airbags is safety, why not make 5 star safety rating as mandatory?

[ABHI_1512]

Came across this interesting piece of news in today’s Times of India, that too printed on the inside pages as a footnote. The government wants to make six airbags compulsory in all vehicles. While the move is laudable indeed, what struck me is the cost mentioned in the article. According to the article, the necessary changes and fitment of four additional airbags would cost around ₹8000-₹9000 !!

Sources said the market leaders have indicated that the cost of the four airbags and the necessary changes in vehicles would cost around Rs 8,000 to Rs 9,000. They said this additional cost will go a long way in protecting passengers in the cars.

The government had made the fitment of two airbags across all new models of cars from last year and this mandatory norm for all existing models came into force from January 1. Sources said the cost of each airbag would be around Rs 1,800 and the cost towards the necessary modification in vehicles would be around Rs 400 or Rs 500. The cost would be reduced for cars sold in large numbers.

While this is a laudable move, I wonder whether the cost mentioned is feasible or not considering the fact that if airbags are such cheap items then what stopped the auto manufacturers from providing them at the first place ?? In a country where majority of people wear seat belts just to avoid the fines, how much of this will help is anybody’s guess. But if this move materialises then many lives will be saved provided they do wear seat belts.


Link- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/88676496.cms

[GTO]

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to the Safety section. Thanks for sharing!

[ashis89]

How effective are X nos. of airbags in a car which is structurally unstable? I believe structural protection should be given importance first and then, introduce airbags.

And crash tests should be mandatory for all car models. Crash results should be available whenever a car is launched (similar to star rating of electrical appliances or the ARAI mileage rating of a car). Let people take an informed decision rather than forcing any random legislation on manufacturers.


Off-topic but related.

[saikarthik]

Govt. should make policies that ensure there are safer vehicles on the road, which is it's responsibility. That doesn't mean they should make amendments that look good on paper, but doesn't ensure the principle behind the original intent.

If you see any reasonable technical regulations, they do not just say this part is mandatory (mostly), they talk about the hazard and it's mitigation/control, and manufacturer should be free enough to take their own method to make sure of how can it be achieved. Until unless the solution is like a monopoly and there is no other way to achieve it.

I would say intent is good, but this should not be the only way. Because it makes the cars costlier, people who are on stretch might end up buying compromised option which may have 6 airbags, but not fairing well in NCAP.

[Axe77]

Lip service and losing the forest for the trees. Rather than try and get irrelevant ISI standards on helmets, speed beeps, more airbags, I would rather the government focus on:

- Dealing with 200 year old trucks plying on expressways.
- Dealing with better enforcement of lane discipline on expressways.
- Dealing with traffic discipline within cities instead of the current video games that people play at signals.
- Dealing with clearing city roads so footpaths are actually available to pedestrians and roads actually available to vehicles.
- Increase accountability and testing towards structural rigidity of vehicles like someone helpfully mentioned above.

But all of the above is a lot more hard work and accountability in the government’s hands. So much easier to lay down empty diktats like adding more airbags and what not.

[ron178]

I'm the last person to say no to a safety development, but I think now would not be a great time to mandate six airbags for all cars. Why? Because curtain airbags are, at present, pretty expensive. The good news is that Autoliv has started manufacturing airbags in India and hopefully that should mean a reduction in cost.

But I would still prefer that some more affordable technologies, which are also life-saving, like ESC and three-point belts in all forward-facing seats are mandated first.

It's also not easy to fit curtain airbags to vehicles that have not been designed to fit them. The only case where I have seen this happen is the Renault Kwid (the Dacia Spring has curtain airbags), but I still think it will likely be hard.

First, I think a good way to go would be tax benefits for fitment of side body+head airbags to a certain volume of cars sold. For example, add a clause to the sub-4m rule to provide the benefit only if head protection is fit to a certain volume of the vehicle model sold (and not just number of variants on the market that offer them - that could lead to exorbitant pricing). Eventually, costs will come down and the manufacturer will voluntary choose to fit it as standard across the range at a nominal price increase, thanks to supplier incentives for bulk purchases which might make it less expensive for the manufacturer to fit it across the range than to a certain volume.

And I don't think the mandate should be for the number of airbags per se. It should mandate side head protection and put the car to the test like they do with front and side impact. A lateral or oblique (like ECE R135) pole test, more precisely. You can't just have the system there, it has to perform as intended. The reason I say the mandate shouldn't be for the number of airbags is that alternative side head protection technologies (HPTs) exist. For example, convertibles and off-roaders which can't fit curtain airbags often use a combination side body+head airbag, and small cars sometimes use it too, because it is far more affordable than having a separate curtain airbag and a seat torso airbag. Example of this system:

(See pole test at 1:30)

https://youtu.be/CdNixhlh62k?t=90

It's important to note, though, that curtain airbags have some distinct advantages over these combination airbags. They protect rear passenger heads, and if they extend far enough forward and the inflated zone has full coverage then they also protect in oblique and frontal small-offset crashes.

Originally Posted by ashis89

How effective are X nos. of airbags in a car which is structurally unstable? I believe structural protection should be given importance first and then, introduce airbags.

If the passenger compartment becomes unstable in an NCAP frontal test, that has no relation to the side impact performance of the car. It is possible for the car to provide good protection in side MDB and pole impact while having unstable structural performance in frontal impact. In side impact it is important to have limited intrusion, but that has no relation to the the passenger compartment integrity in frontal impact. The NCAP penalty for an unstable passenger compartment in frontal impact doesn't necessarily mean the passenger compartment is going to collapse in a crash, it just that means that it is likely to start showing significant deformation even at a slightly higher speed than the NCAP test. But you will never see such a penalty applied in a regulation test because it's subjective. It's part of the 'extra' things NCAPs do beyond regulatory tests, and IMO it's a very good thing. In a car that I expect to perform well in an NCAP test I would be very disappointed with an unstable passenger compartment. But it doesn't mean the car is unsafe or that it has collapsed so much that fitting airbags (or more airbags) will be useless, it just means the structural performance of the passenger compartment could have been better, because it is showing symptoms that it has already reached its peak loading in the 64km/h test, which is not a very good thing.

Side airbags can sometimes help, at least marginally, even if there is considerable undesirable B-pillar intrusion in the side impact. See example.
The side impact structural performance is unrelated to frontal structural performance (examples here and here).

Originally Posted by ashis89

And crash tests should be mandatory for all car models.

They are, but only a pass/fail homologation test for 56km/h offset frontal impact and a 50km/h side impact. Pretty much in line with developed markets in terms of regulation (though the tests are slightly diluted compared to the corresponding UN regulations).

Originally Posted by ashis89

Crash results should be available whenever a car is launched (similar to star rating of electrical appliances or the ARAI mileage rating of a car).

That will only happen if a Bharat NCAP is set up, and usually, even in Government-funded NCAP programs the tests are voluntary. But it would be very useful if star rating labelling was introduced. In that case, even if the car was not tested, the label would say so and sales would dip if consumers saw on the label that the car hasn't been tested, so in a way it would force manufacturers to participate voluntarily. I don't think we're going to see Global NCAP labels (except voluntarily by manufacturers), but we might see them when a Bharat NCAP is set up. (like in the USA, where labelling is for NHTSA tests but not IIHS (independent nonprofit) tests). When it is mandated, expect it to be similar to BEE star labelling.

[sandeepmdas]

I could be wrong here but IMHO the policies in the pipeline are all directly increase the onroad price of passenger vehicles. The taxation is based on cumulative percentage of ex-factory price. Taxes and cess. That is, a car has an ex-factory price of Rs 80, and the tax+cess is 50 %, the government will get Rs 40.

Now, a flex-fuel, BS6 car with 6 airbags can't be made for Rs 80. So the company will increase the price to Rs 100. Overnight, the government will get Rs 50 without raising anything. That's 25% over and above what it received yesterday evening.

In other words, the government wants more revenue from auto sector BUT it cannot ask car makers to raise prices because they are not PSU. Raising the already ridiculous taxes will create a very bad impression. What to do? Well...

If it is seriously concerned about the safety of the citizens it should have offered the car makers tax discount for the safety equipment. For example, assume a car's price is Rs 100. Safety kit is worth of 20. The government can deduct this from the car's price. 100 - 20 is 80. A 50% tax means 40 rupees. The safety kit is taxed say just 10% means 2 rupees. So, instead of reaping 50 rupees the government gets 42 rupees, the difference between low safety-kitted cars and well-equipped will be marginal. A win-win situation.

Nothing like that sort will ever happen guys. Period.