‘Will create rating system for vehicles to ensure better safety’: Nitin Gadkari

The central government is working on creating a star-rating system for vehicular safety in India, while also making mandatory for cars to have six airbags and three-point seatbelts for all passengers, Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari said on Thursday.

In an interaction with reporters on Thursday, Gadkari said the existing safety standards in India are somewhat “loose, archaic and lack homogeneity”, and said that the government is committed to improving the automobile safety ecosystem this year.

“The emphasis on road safety by the government is due to the fact that 150,000 people are killed every year in about 500,000 road accidents, causing a loss of 3.1% to the GDP. My aim is to reduce road accidents by about 50% by the year 2025. To achieve this, we will be undertaking a slew of measurers, some of which would be mandated under rules, while others would be taken up from the enforcement point of view,” he said.

According to Gadkari, the Union ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) will roll out the ‘Bharat New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP)’ to rate the safety features of new vehicles and assign safety ratings in line with similar systems in place across the world.

“This will enable the purchaser of a vehicle to take informed decisions,” Gadkari said.

Currently, India has no government-notified vehicle safety rating system.Indian automakers can, however, voluntarily send cars to be assessed by private global umbrella bodies such as ‘Global NCAP’ that conducts crash tests and then assigns star ratings from zero to five based on how safe the vehicles are.

“Only type approval of vehicles is currently mandated in India. We are working on making star-rating also mandatory, which will include thorough crash test of all vehicles. Mostly, automakers have been voluntarily getting their vehicles tested by NCAP for star rating. However, this is a long process and it will take a couple of months until the draft star-rating system is released. We are studying UN as well as European safety regulations at present,” said a senior ministry official on condition of anonymity.

Since Global NCAP is a private firm, Gadkari said the government is open to changing the proposed name “Bharat NCAP”, based on the suggestions received from the public when floated for comments.

In another major announcement, the minister said that three-point belts will be mandatory for all front-facing passengers in vehicles. HT had first reported this on February 7.

At present, only the front and rear window seatsare mandated to havethree-point seat belts, also known as Y-shaped belts. The middle rear seats in most cars have a seatbelts that go over the lap, similar to those seen on airlines.

“I have signed a file yesterday to make it mandatory for automakers to provide three-point seat belts for all the front-facing passengers in a car,” he said on Thursday, while also highlighting the government’s recent proposal to make six air bags mandatory for all passenger vehicles.

The transport ministry, on January 14, issued a draft notification seeking comments from the public on making six air bags mandatory that will be implemented from October 1. As per current norms, two airbags (one each for the driver and front passenger) are mandatory.

Allaying fears of a potential increase in the cost of cars once these features are implemented, Gadkari said steps such as production linked initiative (PLI) scheme have boosted domestic production of airbags, resulting in a fall in prices.

Other safety systems that are under implementation include electronic stability control, advanced emergency braking systems,transport of dangerous goods, ease of mobility for the differently abled, driver drowsiness attention warning system, blind-spot information system, advanced driver assisting system and lane departure warning system.