[sridhu]

Saw this article in Jalopnik that talks about an extreme, but real, case where an unheeded recall on a 2002 Ford escape caused 10s of millions of dollars of damage and is currently at the centre of a 3 way court battle across 2 car companies.


In India, our recall rate and compliance are both very low. Both car companies and customers are wont to sweep serious issues under the carpet with a "dekha jayega" attitude. Couple with our propensity for doing large scale electrical modifications at shady places, I think it won't be long before such a large scale accident (incident?) happens here too.


Already a mother and child died in an apartment basement in Bangalore due to an unexplained fire. There is a post in the accident thread about a man burnt to a crisp in a Wagon-R fire.

Will the government wake up in time & force compliance or will we wait for disaster?

[speedmiester]

Just read about it in Jalopnik and was about to post it here.

The damages caused by the fire is close to a $100M. That is a lot of money. Only solace is that no lives were lost in the fire.
Goes to show how a failure of a single component can lead to large scale disaster.

[blackwasp]

Originally Posted by sridhu

In India, our recall rate and compliance are both very low...

Sir, this is all due to the chalta hai attitude. Slightly off topic, but I have seen people saving a measly 10-15k by buying models without airbags / abs and using the saved money on a woofer or some accessories. I simply can't fathom this. And this is in an urban area, where presumably people understand how airbags, seat belts work along with the fact that accidents happen without notice.

I know of very few manufacturers that proactively go out of their way to make sure a car has been rectified incase it has been recalled (at least in India). I know at least of one case where a friend with a second hand Toyota Corolla has been contacted by the TASS despite not taking the car to them for servicing, for some recall. Most of the times its just put up in an obscure part of the website - case in point the Ciaz recall for faulty suspension bushes in certain cars. Even the service centres may not work on it due to the load of cars they see everyday. So its not really a direct blame on the manufacturer but rather on the entire system as a whole, including compensation laws.