When it comes to buying a new car, many people compromise safety over mileage and cost. Sadly, manufacturers feel the cut throat and could produce products based on demands. Road accidents take away more than 50,000 lives per year in India alone. Most of which happened due to improper built quality of cars in India. Indian standards towards road safety is far behind any of the European counterparts. This made the government to launch Bharat New Vehicle Safety Assessment Program (BNVSAP) which is the 10th NCAP in the world. Planned to be launched in the mid-2004, this was delayed by 3 years because of lack of infrastructure (Labs, testing equipment, etc). Similar to other NCAPs, this also follows star ratings. At the beginning, the norms are going to be a bit flexible but it is said that manufacturers can expect stringent norms in the future. The testing includes,
- Frontal offset testing
- Side impact testing
- Pedestrian protection testing
- Rear impact testing
- Child dummy dynamic crash testing
When implemented, cars must clear these tests to be sold in the market, features like ABS, Airbags must be standard across all the variants. Now people started realising the importance of safety in their vehicles which motivates manufacturers to build safer cars.
Tata Nexon is the first car made by an Indian manufacturer to score 5-star rating in global NCAP making it the most safest car to pick under the 10 lakh rupee category. Other cars to score a respectable 4 stars include Etios, Brezza, Marazzo, etc.
