RC Bhargava questions NCAP credibility after Maruti cars fail crash test

RC Bhargava

Maruti Suzuki chairman RC Bhargava questioned the standards of the Global New Car Assessment Programme (Global NCAP) and said the organisation is bankrolled by safety component manufacturers and it is wrong to believe that such agencies understand safety requirements better than a country’s government.

“(It is assumed) that NCAP knows the safety business better than all the governments in the world,” Bhargava said at a recent press meet. “The standards that the government of India has implemented were based on European standards of safety.”

Bhargava said one must not get taken in by NCAP standards and assume they offer a path to safe driving and can curb road deaths in India. He emphasised that NCAP safety standards did not focus on the cause of accidents.

“I always say with complete confidence that putting an NCAP standard into cars in India will have no significant impact on the number of accidents at all. Prevention is far better than cure,” he said.

Bhargava’s comments come after Global NCAP said on December 12 that Maruti Suzuki’s Swift achieved one star each for adult and child occupant protection. The Maruti Suzuki S-Presso and Ignis both scored only one star for adult occupant protection and zero stars for child occupant protection.

Global NCAP is a programme of a UK-based charity working in support of the new UN Decade of Action for Road Safety, with the goal of halving road deaths and serious injuries by 2030.

Faulty systems

An estimated 155,622 people were killed in road accidents in India in 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. A total of 403,116 road accident cases were reported last year, the bureau said.

The chairman of the largest car maker in India claimed there is no agency for roads and certification for cars yet. Many accidents occur due to the failure of a vehicle system – it could be faulty brakes, improper lighting, defective suspension or steering, or worn-out tyres.

“These are the aspects which are not being looked at from the safety angle,” Bhargava told reporters.

The other factor, Bhargava said, pertained to how people get driving licences in India and whether they know how to drive correctly and safely. Getting a licence in India is quite unlike how they are issued in most other countries, he said.

“There’s a very rigorous programme of training and testing before a person is certified to get a licence. There’s no such thing in India. Driver error is a major cause of accidents in India…” he said.

Bhargava affirmed that while domestic car makers are adopting safety features like airbags, the ultimate objective should be on vehicle and driver fitness as a means of preventing accidents. He noted that additional safety features also made cars more expensive.

“Safety means ultimately that a customer should be able to buy a safe car but more importantly, that he should have a minimum chance of having an accident,” Bhargava said when asked about Maruti Suzuki’s long-term plans for enhancing safety standards and crash capabilities. “But the bigger aspect is to ensure vehicle fitness or even driver fitness and ensuring rules and regulations are strictly followed.”