Everyone wants to own a car from their hard earned money as they can travel anywhere with their family and friends and also can be safe for them too. But what we always see is that the majority of the buyers prefer these following priorities for their first car - fuel efficiency, comfort, space, practicality, good features and also value for money. These things have to be in their car that should fulfil the primary needs of a buyer and should be able to pay for that car. We agree that these things do matter a lot for every cost cautious buyers around the world, but what also really matters the most is how safe these cars are.
Safety feature is something that helps in making one survive a horrific crash in case it happens on road. While driving or travelling, nearly a lakh of people die in road accidents because of rash driving or not driving carefully, or over speeding, but primarily because of the vehicles safety aspect. It is an important aspect in safety - car’s build quality. If a car’s build quality is kept light, then the passengers inside won’t be able to survive. So it needs a strong body structure to make passengers survive in a crash. Safety is what is not bought along with the rest of the facilities or priorities, as hardly everyone knows about safety before taking buying decisions for a car for their personal use, which is so important these days.
And that’s where crash testing of these vehicles comes into play, where we can clearly understand that how much level of protection we get in real life accidents. All crash test agencies do come out loud and say that only safest cars have to be made and sold to the buyers those who don’t know about safety of a car. There are numerous different crash test agencies that are working in different countries. Global NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) which conducts crash tests every new car sold in Indian and African markets; Euro NCAP which carries out crash tests for every car sold in European markets; ASEAN NCAP which tests for every new model of car sold in Asian markets; Latin NCAP which crash tests every new car sold in Latin markets like Peru; ANCAP (Australian NCAP) that crash tests every new car sold in Australian markets. And all crash test agencies do have their own protocols and according to the protocols they test the safety of every new car. But for India, Global NCAP does a voluntary test of finding a car that can surpass in safety standards with only standard passive safety features.
How do they crash test every single new car for safety? They do a random selection of cars so that the car can be tested, and pick up in such a way, so that a manufacturer don’t notice it. But there are some carmakers who come up and give their cars for testing them on safety parameters.
First test they carry out is a frontal offset crash, where it is carried over at a speed of 64 kmph and they test the driver side only, when a car takes the impact at that speed via a metal barrier. It shows how much the car absorbs the impact and if it reaches to the A-pillar, then that means the inside passenger cell remains intact, but if the impact goes inside the cell, then there is a certain chance of having critical injuries for the driver and passenger.
Even the design and construction of the car dashboard also matters. And then they finalize the score of the car after the test and give the amount of stars achieved by a car for adult occupant and child occupant protection. For example in a scale of 0-5 it is determined like, 0 star means that it is highly unsafe and won’t survive in an accident, 1 star means it offer poor safety levels in a crash, 2 stars means it offers below average safety, 3 stars means it will offer acceptable safety, 4 stars offers good to above average safety levels, which is good enough to consider, and 5 stars means that it offers excellent protection to the passengers in a crash.
But if a car scores 4 stars and 5 stars, these are considered to be the safest because they offer stable body shell integrity and can withstand further load where as on the other hand, cars which scores 5 stars, are the best in safety, where they offer maximum safety standards and features and also the body shell remains intact when impact is absorbed. Also some agencies even do a side impact crash test, which is applied to the cars those who pass the frontal offset crash, and also they even test some active safety tests like AEB (Auto Emergency Braking), FCW( Frontal Collision Warning), LKA( Lane Keep Assist), etc.
Since India is a country where people are always sensitive about costs, accordingly the carmakers offer minimum safety features at the prices the cars are sold. The cars that are scored badly to adequate score are not very safe, despite having the necessary passive safety features but with a light build quality, which isn’t a match at all, as it could cause fatal injuries. These agencies always are there to show the real truth of a car’s safety, irrespective of which platform is used which makes a difference in cars performance, dynamics and safety. After seeing the poor performance of cars in safety, all manufactures are improving the car’s build quality which is good news, because it should be able to score at least 4 stars or 5 stars.
Thanks to all the crash test agencies, all car buyers have got to know that safety is also extremely important, which was never been taken into consideration before, and the change that we can see in car safety is a big departure. It should make buyers take a perfect decision of having a safe car within their budget. The cars with light build quality are never safe at all, and putting the hard earned money on it doesn’t make any sense. So it’s better we step towards safety and always prefer safe cars with 4 stars or even for 5 stars, irrespective of the budget the buyers set for a new car.
(The writer is a student of final year of BTech in Mechanical Engineering and it is his personal opinion)