Indian consumers deserve safer cars – Demand raised during Consumer International car safety workshop

Panchkula, July 21, 2016 : Safety features like air bags and anti skid braking system (ABS) should be made standard in all variants of cars was the common refrain among all participants in a car safety workshop organised by Delhi based Consumer VOICE in partnership with Citizen Awareness Group and Panchkula Management Association (PMA) at a city hotel, on Thursday.

The workshop is part of a global campaign by Consumer International to demand for safer cars for consumers. The consumer demand for safer cars will push for better safety regulation and standards in India at par with global safety standards.

Making a presentation on behalf of Consumer Voice Delhi and Consumer International Mr. Hemant Upadhyay, and driving behaviour expert Dr Guneet Singh said we as car users also need to give equal importance to safety aspects of cars as we do to looks, mileage, etc and demand of manufacturers and the government to produce safer cars for Indian roads at par with the advanced countries.

The participants were informed that India is the world’s sixth largest car market and 2.03 million passenger cars were sold in India as per 2015 data.  India has been witnessing very high rate of road accidents resulting in the largest number of road deaths and injuries in the world.  On an average 1,374 crashes and 400 deaths take place every day on Indian roads.  One of the major reasons for high causalities in road accidents in the lack of safety features in Indian cars which have been criticized as being insufficient and ineffective compared to developed countries.

They said when the world is gearing up for fully automated self drive cars, most of the cars sold in India lack basic safety features like air bags, antilock braking systems (ABS), electronic stability control (ESC) etc. Due to absence of strict safety regulations and testing procedures like Global New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP), most car manufactures design their cars in India without essential car safety features in name of cost cutting. Recently when some of popular cars in India were tested on NCAP standards out of 5 cars four failed badly, they added.

Mr. IPS Anand, Secretary General of PMA, and Mr S K Nayar, President, Indian Citizens’ Forum, also spoke on the occasion.