During recent years, the call for safer cars for India has gained quite an impetus and for all the right reasons. Many cars sold in India were found to have a lower safety rating and standard over their international-spec. Homegrown automakers Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra were instrumental in this regard rolling out safer cars one after the other. And now, all cars in India will mandatorily feature dual front airbags as standard across all their variants.
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According to the previous circular and directive from the government, back in 2019, it was mandatory for all manufacture to feature driver side airbag, high-speed alert, reverse parking sensors and seatbelt warning lamp across all their models.
This move ensured all but the safety of the co-passenger which many thought was compromised, by not making it mandatory. Hence, now the government will make appropriate amends and make it mandatory for all cars in India to feature dual front airbags. According to The Times of India, the government’s proposal to implement dual front airbags for both the driver and the co-passenger as a mandatory offering has also been cleared and approved top-most technical committee. Some reports also suggest that a draft of the same notification has been put forth the AIS ( Automotive Industry Standard ) which is the body that looks after the safety features on various vehicles.
A government official was also quoted saying that there will be no sort of compromise on the safety of cars irrespective of their costs. As part of a global consensus, all vehicles should have maximum features to protect the occupants in case of any incidents.
To keep up the with development, the government ministry of road transport is said to be working on a detailed timeline to ensure a smooth and timely rollout of this directive making dual front airbags mandatory. It is also understood that the government will provide a timeline of a year to all the automakers to comply with this new directive and offer dual front airbags standard mandatorily across their portfolio of cars notwithstanding the cost of their cars.