India is one of the top countries in the list of highest number of road accidents and fatalities in the world. To bring down that number, the Indian government has made it mandatory to have a few additional features in every car that is sold in India. Currently, there are no such rules, and many car variants do not even offer the airbags and ABS as an optional feature.
The government has set the July 2019 as the deadline for all the car manufacturers to comply with the new rule. According to the new law, any car manufactured after July 2019 in India will have to offer driver airbag, seat-belt reminder, speeding alert systems beyond 80 km/h, reverse parking sensor and overrides for the central locking systems.
Currently, none of the affordable cars offers these features, and they are restricted to the higher-end vehicles. This will also cause the prices of the vehicles to rise in the Indian market, which is quite a price-sensitive market.
There are additional mandates that the new cars manufactured after October 2019 will have to follow. The government has laid out a plan which makes crash test mandatory. There will be a frontal crash test at 56 km/h and a side crash test at 50 km/h. All the car available in the market right now will have time until October 2019 to comply with the new rules.
The new crash test rules will also apply to the “pedestrian protection”. This is targetted to improve the pedestrian safety in the event of a collision with the pedestrian. The new law may change the design of the bonnet and structure to make them safer for the pedestrians.
A government notification released earlier mentioned:
“Motor vehicles of category M1 (cars), manufactured on and after the 1st day of July 2019, shall comply with the additional safety features and its requirements stipulated in AIS-145 -2017.We have introduced speed alert system since speeding alone accounted for nearly 74,000 of the 1.51 lakh deaths in road accidents. The audio alerts will start when the speed crosses 80 km/h. The alert will be sharper when the vehicle crosses 100 km/h, and non-stop when it’s over 120 km/h,”
