With Bharat NCAP set to roll out on the 1st of October, India’s woeful road fatality statistics have gained public attention. While Bharat NCAP, India’s first automotive safety ratings system, is a voluntary measure, many feel it will encourage car manufacturers to flaunt newly-introduced safety mechanisms given how the mass market car consumer has pivoted from being cost-conscious to quality-conscious.
But though the introduction of Bharat NCAP is a historic move, many feel that the parameters of crash safety assessed by it don’t take into account the multitude of variables that can change the outcome of a car crash.
According to an X (formerly Twitter) user and automotive safety engineer operating under the handle @RoadSafetyGuy, “The car’s safety performance will change even at a slightly higher (+10/20 kmph) impact speeds, as crash energy increases exponentially with an increase in speed.”
Under Bharat NCAP’s current safety assessment parameters, a vehicle is tested for frontal impact at 64 kmph, and 30-50 kmph for side impact. The individual, who is also a forensic road crash investigator, highlighted that Bharat NCAP, much like all NCAPs in the world, only takes a certain type of crash test into account, such as head-on collisions, along with side impact and pole (or tree) impact. However, roll-over crashes or, as is common on highways, rear impact that crushes the cabin, are not taken into account.
In fact, the issue of truck and bus safety is one that is treated with a tragically cavalier attitude in India. Bus accidents are currently one of the biggest contributors to mass fatalities on highways. Speaking at the launch of Bharat NCAP in New Delhi, Piyush Tewari, founder and CEO of Save Life Foundation, the country’s foremost not-for-profit organisation investigating road accidents, stated that Bharat NCAP needs to evolve into Bharat NVAP — New Vahan Assessment Programme — and bring about standardisation in the structural integrity of buses, which at present is abysmal.
“The problem is that bus manufacturers only make the chassis. The body work is done by small to medium-scale operators. There’s no standardised framework for building a bus’s body. It can be steel or aluminium. The bus body code needs to be amended to bring in mandatory safety features. They also need to be crash tested for braking systems and occupant safety, because their scale of damage is much higher,” says Tewari.
Both Tewari and Road Safety Guy (who chose to remain anonymous) are appreciative of Bharat NCAP and the effect it will have on vehicular safety. But it only addresses one of the three chief aspects of road safety. “Bharat NCAP is a remarkable step. But each crash involves three elements. Road infrastructure, the driver, and the vehicle. Bharat NCAP only looks at vehicular safety,” added Tewari.
Which means ensuring that licences are issued only to capable drivers. There’s also the implementation of electronic enforcement (like e-challans), child safety parameters, holding road contractors and engineers accountable, etc.,” Tewari explained.
“Further, the new amendments apply only to new roads. Retrofitting old roads with safety furniture is essential. You have a number of roads which are missing crash barriers,” says Tewari, when asked about the infrastructure overhaul that needs to go hand-in-hand with vehicular safety reforms. “The government has identified black spots, or high fatality zones, and started placing crash barriers and proper signs at such places,” he added.
Tewari’s organisation has, for over 15 years, provided invaluable data on the nature of highway-related accidents, working with local authorities to identify accident-prone zones while also helping with the provision of emergency medical care — an area, Tewari believes, that has not been treated with the same urgency as passenger car safety.
“We need to have a Right to Emergency Care law. It needs to guarantee high-quality trauma care. We are still losing lives because of delays, even where the severity of the crash may not be very high. We need legislation that will make trauma care a right, because it is fundamentally preserving our right to life,” feels Tewari.
Tewari and his foundation were instrumental in getting the Supreme Court to pass the Good Samaritan Law in 2016, after having filed a PIL in 2012 for the same. Today, the law allows any bystander to voluntarily administer emergency care without being swept-up in a tidal wave of police interrogations and court appearances.
Things are looking up, however. “The Supreme Court has taken up the issue of the implementation of Section 136 A of the Motor Vehicles Act, that mandates electronic enforcement. But the recovery of electronic challans is very low, only about 30-35 percent,” said Tewari.
Many have questioned the voluntary nature of Bharat NCAP, a loophole which might keep mass market carmakers with a poor safety record from having their vehicles tested. However, Tewari claims that being voluntary allows Bharat NCAP to circumvent a lot of red tape. “The moment you make something mandatory, you will have a lot of opposition, and the implementation will take a lot longer. This is a market-driven exercise, meant to bring-in transparency. So the folks who are not being transparent will be required to become so.”
Vehicles that aren’t high on safety are under far greater scrutiny than before, both from the public and the government. “Section 135 of the Motor Vehicles Act mandates forensic investigation of road crashes. Which means that if a manufacturer isn’t prioritising safety and this is revealed in the investigation, that will come out and compel certain mass market brands to send their base models for testing,” Tewari added.
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