Safety isn't a luxury item.

Is safety optional? Is it something only the rich in Beemers and Mercs should enjoy? Bloody hell, NO!

A human life is a human life - whether said individual globe trots by private jet or ferries you from the airport in a rickety cab. You can’t put a price on a human life. So wh y isn't our goverment taking that responsibility a little more seriously?

In terms of road fatalities India clocks a shocking 92,618 deaths every year, second only to China’s 107,077 deaths. Compare that to the United Kingdom that has just 3,221 road fatalities despite having more cars on the road. The reasons are plenty - education, infrastructure, emergency services - but it has a lot to do with the cars themselves and how safe they actually are.
In Europe anti-lock brakes are standard on all new cars and plans are well underway to make Electronic Stability Program standard. Every new car is subjected to a rigorous Euro-NCAP crash test (conducted by the FIA), those crash ratings determining showroom sales. The Rover 100, the first car to be tested by Euro-NCAP, scored just one star and was withdrawn from sale 22 months later.
We, in India, are alien to the concept of crash safety. Hell, we’re so far behind the rest of the world that side impact safety beams are still not mandatory. And thanks to lobbying may never be until the 800 is phased out. Our so-called SUVs are death traps. Our trucks… oh god, our trucks!
I was wrong, wrong to think that manufacturers would get pro-active in making their cars safer and ensuring we drivers walk out of a ‘big’ one (and the rate at which we’re going every second one of us will have a ‘big’ one, invariably through no fault of ours.) That’s not to say cars aren’t safer than they were ten years ago but that, in the main, is due to the same cars being exported and having to meet certain minimum safety standards.
Take ABS for instance. We all seem to be pretty ignorant about how useful ABS actually is, and especially in a country like India where the roads are slippery and gravel and oil are ever present making every emergency braking maneuver a big lock-up moment. And when you have big lock-up you have no steering control, your car invariably slews off to the left or right, you will plough into something and in the absence of airbags have your face rearranged. It happens all the time, trust me.
Not convinced? I tested the Indica with the now-optional ABS brakes and she takes 12.74 metres LESS to grind to a dead stop from 80kmph. Put another way, when faced with that moment your Indica will take four car lengths less to stop. In the wet you can comfortably double that figure. Not just that, you will retain full steering control giving you a better chance of steering around that cow or tractor.
So why don’t manufacturers offer ABS as standard on all their cars? Export Indicas have had it for years but it is only now being offered in the domestic market. Maruti charges around 20 grand more for ABS on the Zen Estilo, Wagon R and Swift. But you can only get it on the Vxi variants. What if I can only afford an Lxi? Does that mean my wife, my nieces and nephews should be unsafe? What if you want a bog standard Indica, not a fully-loaded V2 Turbo? Does that mean you have no right to demand safety features?
Today I want to buy an i10 for my wife. I don’t want the stereo or the leather wrapped steering wheel or even the tacho. Hell, I can even paint the bumpers at a later date. What I want is ABS but I can’t have it if I don’t shell out an additional lakh for features that I could probably add on at a later date. I can’t install ABS after a year!
Indian customers will always be a miserly lot. If they can save 20 grand they will; if they knew that the 20 grand would one day save their lives, would reduce their insurance payouts and hospital bills they would gladly plonk for it. But they don’t and that’s the sad part. Hell, we’re so stupid that we still don’t realise that seat belts save lives. That helmets save lives.
I keep having this argument with manufacturers; they say buyers don’t want to pay for ABS. I say, you have a social responsibility (and obligation) to ensure your buyer walks out of a crash alive. And if ABS were to be standard on each and every car how much more would it cost? Four grand? Five at the most?
Manufactures being far from philanthropically inclined, I say it’s time the government stepped in and made ABS mandatory on every car, just like they put their foot down with Bharat Stage II emission norms and forced every manufacturer to move to fuel injection in April 2000. A year later airbags should become compulsory by which time a national crash testing facility should be active, crashing and rating every car sold in India.
If you were in the market then for a small car, wouldn’t you buy the safest car? I know I would.