Topic: India May Have The Most Dangerous Cars In The World

[Autos_Editor]

Models representing 20-percent of Indian car market score zero stars in Global NCAP testing

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[aquadorhj]

wow...  air bag makes that much of a difference, huh?.   from 0 star to 4 on VW Polo?  .

[mmret]

wow...  air bag makes that much of a difference, huh?.   from 0 star to 4 on VW Polo?  .

Simple truths for the masses



I'm all for safer cars (and safer transport in general....ie: well lit roads, proper signage, sensible intersection design, CONVEX ASPHERICAL SIDE VIEW MIRRORS) but I am intellectually and philosophically bothered by the universal application of random and arbitrary standards without consideration of "the denominator".

India per capita GDP is about 1500 USD. I just spent roughly that much on a laptop. Life's not fair, lucky me.

Since their resources are so limited, perhaps safety is a luxury that cannot yet be afforded. Let the buyer decide for themselves if they'd rather have an airbag to go from an arbitrary 0 stars to an equally arbitrary 4 stars in an otherwise identical VW Polo, or spend that money on something else. I don't know, maybe some school tuition for the kids. Faced with that set of circumstances I'd probably take the tuition too.

Virtually everyone has practical limits on their resources and faces a similar dilemma at some point. The enforcement of safety standards has to be at a level that makes sense for the local market, otherwise it just becomes a tax on development. To be contrived you could try to enforce that every car has to come with 12 airbags, a crash structure worthy of the finest MB or Volvo, full time AWD, and be lathered in Nomex but you'd just end up with a baseline car costing a fortune that nobody can afford as well as a grey/black market for servicable and "unsafe" vehicles at much lower price points. Probably end up with worse results and pissed off emerging middle class that would love to buy a car.....were it available at a price that makes sense.

So yes, safety is good. But arbitrary blanket statements are stupid.

[Snowman]

If a car crash doesn't get you the air quality will 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/30/travel/most-polluted-city/index.html?hpt=hp_bn10

[CSH]

Traffic is so slow in mumbai and big cities in india that the airbags will never get deployed and most of the time its minor fender benders (In 2013 it took me 2 hours to travel 8 kms during rush hour in mumbai, half that during regular hours) on a 8 lane expressway called Western Express highway.
Traffic on the interstate highways is such that if you get into a major accident it will almost always be fatal airbags or not..
Cars with western equivalent safety standards will be unaffordable

[Sir Osis of Liver]

How about make the choice between clean, modern, safe cars and public transportation, instead of between dangerous, dirty relics and public transportation?

The safety designations aren't arbitrary, they are based on the statistical likelihood of serious injury or death.

[mmret]

The safety designations aren't arbitrary, they are based on the statistical likelihood of serious injury or death.

The levels are arbitrary. Would you be satisfied if you asked me about the weather and all I could respond with was cold, meh, or hot? Who defines what is what? Who decides what is enough?

IMO (and it will never happen) crash test results should be expressed in absolute terms (ie: X cm of deflection, etc.). Putting "stars" into it is entirely arbitrary and the stars aren't even consistent from one generation of tests to another.

Star ratings work for movies, music, food, perhaps vacation destinations..... things that cannot really be numerically expressed. Crash tests results in all likelihood are already collected numerically, and then dumbed down in an arbitrary way for mass consumption.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

The safety designations aren't arbitrary, they are based on the statistical likelihood of serious injury or death.

The levels are arbitrary. Would you be satisfied if you asked me about the weather and all I could respond with was cold, meh, or hot? Who defines what is what? Who decides what is enough?

IMO (and it will never happen) crash test results should be expressed in absolute terms (ie: X cm of deflection, etc.). Putting "stars" into it is entirely arbitrary and the stars aren't even consistent from one generation of tests to another.

Star ratings work for movies, music, food, perhaps vacation destinations..... things that cannot really be numerically expressed. Crash tests results in all likelihood are already collected numerically, and then dumbed down in an arbitrary way for mass consumption.

Newspapers are written to be understood by people with 8th grade reading skills in NA and you're going to suggest telling people about car's structural integrity in engineering terms? How do you suppose that would work in India or China with even lower literacy rates?

And it's still not arbitrary. Most of these systems are some kind of calculated normal distribution based on accident models.

[Scarecrow]

Models representing 20-percent of Indian car market score zero stars in Global NCAP testing

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The cars might be crap, but the driving habits are far and away the most dangerous aspect of motoring life in India.

Total chaos.

[dkaz]

How do you suppose that would work in India or China with even lower literacy rates?

Decided to look up literacy rates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate

Canada 99%
USA 99%
China 95% (with a very complicated writing system I must add)
India 74%

Just for kicks...
North Korea 99%
South Korea 98% 

[tpl]

How about make the choice between clean, modern, safe cars and public transportation, instead of between dangerous, dirty relics and public transportation?

The safety designations aren't arbitrary, they are based on the statistical likelihood of serious injury or death.

I suggest that India, the big cities anyway, can't make that choice.   Public transport needs some infrastructure...like room for safe roads, and many railways, subways and even modern safe clean buses. All of these cost huge sums of money to provide, even rich Toronto in rich Ontario in rich Canada can't manage it.   As mmret and CSH say, cars with modern western safety standards would be unaffordable.

I started driving in the days before seatbelts, airbags, radial tires, disc  brakes even, in the Uk with narrow roads, higher speed limits and my cars were usually rustbuckets with little structural integrity left if they ever had any.   It would never occurred to me to use  public transit rather than my car...public transit ( then and there, note) was for the poor people and commuters who had no choice.  I wonder if a large part of the Indian population is in that frame of mind...once you can afford a car you will damn well use it regardless.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

How about make the choice between clean, modern, safe cars and public transportation, instead of between dangerous, dirty relics and public transportation?

The safety designations aren't arbitrary, they are based on the statistical likelihood of serious injury or death.

I suggest that India, the big cities anyway, can't make that choice.   Public transport needs some infrastructure...like room for safe roads, and many railways, subways and even modern safe clean buses. All of these cost huge sums of money to provide, even rich Toronto in rich Ontario in rich Canada can't manage it.   As mmret and CSH say, cars with modern western safety standards would be unaffordable.

I started driving in the days before seatbelts, airbags, radial tires, disc  brakes even, in the Uk with narrow roads, higher speed limits and my cars were usually rustbuckets with little structural integrity left if they ever had any.   It would never occurred to me to use  public transit rather than my car...public transit ( then and there, note) was for the poor people and commuters who had no choice.  I wonder if a large part of the Indian population is in that frame of mind...once you can afford a car you will damn well use it regardless.

Public transport infrastructure is always cheaper than private vehicle infrastructure per passenger. Places like Mumbai are already choked with vehicles. Adding millions more will just strangle the place.

[PJ]

The safety designations aren't arbitrary, they are based on the statistical likelihood of serious injury or death.

The levels are arbitrary. Would you be satisfied if you asked me about the weather and all I could respond with was cold, meh, or hot? Who defines what is what? Who decides what is enough?

IMO (and it will never happen) crash test results should be expressed in absolute terms (ie: X cm of deflection, etc.). Putting "stars" into it is entirely arbitrary and the stars aren't even consistent from one generation of tests to another.

Star ratings work for movies, music, food, perhaps vacation destinations..... things that cannot really be numerically expressed. Crash tests results in all likelihood are already collected numerically, and then dumbed down in an arbitrary way for mass consumption.

You can never express it in absolute terms as there are far too many variables.   Speed, angles, weights, etc.  Every crash will give a different result in the real world.  The best info they can give is a general rating.

[mixmanmash]

How about make the choice between clean, modern, safe cars and public transportation, instead of between dangerous, dirty relics and public transportation?

The safety designations aren't arbitrary, they are based on the statistical likelihood of serious injury or death.

I suggest that India, the big cities anyway, can't make that choice.   Public transport needs some infrastructure...like room for safe roads, and many railways, subways and even modern safe clean buses. All of these cost huge sums of money to provide, even rich Toronto in rich Ontario in rich Canada can't manage it.   As mmret and CSH say, cars with modern western safety standards would be unaffordable.

I started driving in the days before seatbelts, airbags, radial tires, disc  brakes even, in the Uk with narrow roads, higher speed limits and my cars were usually rustbuckets with little structural integrity left if they ever had any.   It would never occurred to me to use  public transit rather than my car...public transit ( then and there, note) was for the poor people and commuters who had no choice.  I wonder if a large part of the Indian population is in that frame of mind...once you can afford a car you will damn well use it regardless.

Public transport infrastructure is always cheaper than private vehicle infrastructure per passenger. Places like Mumbai are already choked with vehicles. Adding millions more will just strangle the place.

The whole problem is having cheap affordable cars like the Tata Nano.  You're going to have more people buy cars and plug up the roads.  Yes, it gets families off of their scooters / motorcycles.  And I mean families - they'll load up 4-5 people on the scooter or motorcycle.

[Fobroader]

Having never driven in India myself, I can only base my opinion from TV, internet and the experiences of some friends/colleagues that have been there. With the amount of scooters, tuk tuks(or whatever the Indian equivalent is called), unregistered semis, cattle, pedestrians, bad roads do you really think that they need cars that have 5 star NCAP ratings?? Do they ever get going fast enough?? Will they be remotely affordable?? What about the older models on the road that are death traps and number in the millions?? Seeing a 25 year rez wagon on the streets here is a rare occurrence, at least in my experience, is a 25 year old clunker that rare to see on the street there?? If I was making a tenth of my wage, or less, per year, Id want a car to get around in, airbags, stability control and ABS be damned.

[tpl]

I suggest that India, the big cities anyway, can't make that choice.   Public transport needs some infrastructure...like room for safe roads, and many railways, subways and even modern safe clean buses. All of these cost huge sums of money to provide, even rich Toronto in rich Ontario in rich Canada can't manage it.   As mmret and CSH say, cars with modern western safety standards would be unaffordable.

I started driving in the days before seatbelts, airbags, radial tires, disc  brakes even, in the Uk with narrow roads, higher speed limits and my cars were usually rustbuckets with little structural integrity left if they ever had any.   It would never occurred to me to use  public transit rather than my car...public transit ( then and there, note) was for the poor people and commuters who had no choice.  I wonder if a large part of the Indian population is in that frame of mind...once you can afford a car you will damn well use it regardless.

Public transport infrastructure is always cheaper than private vehicle infrastructure per passenger. Places like Mumbai are already choked with vehicles. Adding millions more will just strangle the place.

You are correct of course that millions more will cause the city to stop completely.  The same argument applies to Toronto...which I grant you is just a village compared to Mumbai. So surely TO should have good public transit and, importantly, enough of it so we don't feel the need to go around buying more and more cars.  It all comes down to who has the money...and in both cases it is not the government.

[mixmanmash]

Having never driven in India myself, I can only base my opinion from TV, internet and the experiences of some friends/colleagues that have been there. With the amount of scooters, tuk tuks(or whatever the Indian equivalent is called), unregistered semis, cattle, pedestrians, bad roads do you really think that they need cars that have 5 star NCAP ratings?? Do they ever get going fast enough?? Will they be remotely affordable?? What about the older models on the road that are death traps and number in the millions?? Seeing a 25 year rez wagon on the streets here is a rare occurrence, at least in my experience, is a 25 year old clunker that rare to see on the street there?? If I was making a tenth of my wage, or less, per year, Id want a car to get around in, airbags, stability control and ABS be damned.

Rickshaws.

[Fobroader]

Having never driven in India myself, I can only base my opinion from TV, internet and the experiences of some friends/colleagues that have been there. With the amount of scooters, tuk tuks(or whatever the Indian equivalent is called), unregistered semis, cattle, pedestrians, bad roads do you really think that they need cars that have 5 star NCAP ratings?? Do they ever get going fast enough?? Will they be remotely affordable?? What about the older models on the road that are death traps and number in the millions?? Seeing a 25 year rez wagon on the streets here is a rare occurrence, at least in my experience, is a 25 year old clunker that rare to see on the street there?? If I was making a tenth of my wage, or less, per year, Id want a car to get around in, airbags, stability control and ABS be damned.

Rickshaws.

Thank you 

[pi314]

auto rickshaws... there are cycle rickshaws and people pulled rickshaws too...

[Fobroader]

auto rickshaws... there are cycle rickshaws and people pulled rickshaws too...

Didnt know there were that many versions.