Indians are unsafe drivers. That is not helped by the fact that manufacturers of cars often compromise on basic safety features to keep the price of the vehicle within easy reach of their targeted customer. Together, this has proved to be a recipe for disaster
The Indian car-market is hurting. After several years of double-digit growth, the market for new cars shrank significantly in 2013. Of course, car sales are linked to the overall economic environment and are cyclical, so last year’s decline should be seen as an aberration in a secular growth trend. The Indian car market is still destined to become the third-largest car market in the world by 2020, behind China and the United States.
What is deeply troubling though is that over the past decade, more than one million people have died on Indian roads. This column has highlighted the number before, and for lack of a better word called it a genocide of massive proportions. More people have died on Indian roads — some 1,50,000 people will die in road accidents in 2014 — than in sectarian riots.
Think about this number for a second. In absolute terms it is just above a tenth of a per cent of the country’s population, a number so small that it will be rounded off as a statistical error. Yet, even then, road accidents are the largest cause of premature deaths in India. The country’s roads remain one of the most unsafe roads in the world. And what is truly horrifying is that almost nothing is being done to prevent these deaths from taking place. Shocking, considering our aspirations to become a global power. And while most of these deaths involve two-wheelers and trucks, car accidents also take a heavy toll.
In the light of these facts, recent events regarding India’s automotive industry have been extremely surprising. Recently, the Global New Car Assessment Programme took a few best-selling Indian small cars to test them under global standards for safety tests. This basically involved crashing the cars into a steel barrier at two speeds: 56 kmph and 64 kmph. While both speeds are above the Indian urban speed limit, most people will agree that neither speed is unduly ‘excessive’.
Every single car tested failed the tests — they got a ‘zero star’ rating. And these cars were bought independently of the manufacturers and shipped to Europe. Manufacturer representatives attended the tests, which were the same as the recently introduced latin NCAP for southern American countries; another automotive emerging market.
Most of the tests took place last summer, and manufacturers had time to ponder over the results. India’s best-selling car, India’s ‘cheapest’ car, global cars made in India — all failed the test. None of the cars tested had ‘active-safety’ features such as airbags now standard in almost every car sold in Western Europe and America as well as in China.
Over the past two decades, active safety features have rapidly percolated the automotive industry. Features such as airbags, anti-lock brakes and electronic stability programmes, hitherto available only on luxury cars, are now available on the smallest cars. The ABS helps cars brake in slippery conditions and prevents cars from locking up their brakes if one is braking while turning. The ESP takes matters further, preventing the car from getting into extremely dangerous situations. Newer features such as ‘Brake Assist’ actually engage the brakes if the car senses an obstruction ahead of it. The declining costs of such features and the undeniable evidence that such features save lives have prompted car-makers to install these features in their vehicles, and then sell their cars in safety. So much so, that a bad score on the European NCAP test can doom a car even before it goes on sale.
Which is why most cars sold in Europe have Euro NCAP scores of either four-star or the top five-star rating — for the driver, front passenger and infant/child sitting at the back. Such high scores demonstrate that at a reasonable car speed, there is a decent chance of surviving an accident; it is however no guarantee of survival. Most importantly, these tests are not conducted on the top-of-the-line models. Most often they are conducted, including the Global NCAP tests which tested the Indian cars, on base entry-level models.
It is not as if cars sold in India do not have safety features; they do. Unfortunately, in a desperate urge to make their cars look affordable, Indian car-makers usually fit features such as airbags, often only one on the driver’s side, and ABS only on the highest-end model of their cars. In some cases, carmakers fit airbags and ABS on ‘option’ packs of their top specified models.
In doing so, car-makers fatten their wallets as these top-specified models have higher margins because they come loaded with other features such as better interior trim, advanced entertainment systems, alloy wheels and so on. Safety features, which by themselves cost maybe Rs 10,000, are sold as part of a Rs 50,000 upgrade more often than not.
In response to the results of the tests, which appeared just ahead of the car-makers’ biennial jamboree, the Auto Expo, many car-makers used the excuse that their cars met all mandated ‘Indian norms’; which apparently involve a crash test at 48km. However, the Union Ministry of Heavy Industry, under which auto-makers fall, has no way of independently verifying whether crash tests have been conducted. And the norms themselves are horribly inadequate. It is, however, true that some new regulations will come into force from 2016, and cars will have to meet slightly stricter norms. This was one of the reasons that Maruti stopped production of the iconic Maruti 800 a couple of months ago, as the car (designed 30 years ago) would never have satisfied modern safety norms.
It takes a lot of money to develop a car, even a low-cost car, which is why cars are global projects. It is unlikely that a car is solely sold in India, and this was the worrying bit about the recent tests. At least a couple of cars tested were global models and one was solely produced in India. The European variant of those cars had high NCAP scores while the Indian variants failed. Therefore, one can reasonably make the argument that an Indian life is less important to global auto-makers than European lives.
Of course, they won’t say that. They will say that Indian consumers are not willing to pay for safety, but even that excuse is invalid because safety is not even available on the cheaper versions of manufacturers’ cars even as an option. Not every consumer is willing to pay half a lakh of rupees for leather seats and alloy wheels along with airbags and ABS. German manufacturer Volkswagen, whose Polo failed the test initially, deliberated and recently started offering airbags as standard across the Polo range, including the base model.
Consumers should be given the choice to access safety at a reasonable price, because the technology exists and it is not very expensive. Yes, having these safety features is no guarantee of survival should a vehicle ever get into an accident. But would people want to put the lives and the well-being of themselves and their families at risk to save a few thousand rupeesIJ
Admittedly, Indians are unsafe drivers. Child seats are rare; instead Indians often have children on the laps in the front passenger (and in far too many stupid cases, on the driver’s lap). Even a fender-bender, therefore, will put the child’s life at risk. It is illegal for children to sit in the front seat of a car unless they are four-feet-ten-inch tall in many countries. We do not wear seat belts, we text and talk on our mobile phones, and what not. Indian users are woefully unconscious of personal safety. That is a failing of both the Government and of the industry. We cannot and must not let this carry on, unless we want to convert our rivers of asphalt into rivers of blood.