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India: No Plan to Mandate Airbags
India’s Ministry of Road Transport and Highways says it has no plans to require airbags in passenger cars, The Economic Times reports.
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India’s Ministry of Road Transport and Highways says it has no plans to require airbags in passenger cars, The Economic Times reports.
But the ministry notes that in October 2017 it will begin a two-year phase-in of rules that improve structural crash protection for lateral and offset frontal collisions and mandate steering columns that collapse in head-on crashes.
The country mandated seatbelts nearly 11 years ago but added a child restraint system requirement only last October.
In 2014 India’s five best-selling minicars all flunked crash tests conducted by Global NCAP, a nonprofit safety group that provides crashworthiness data for vehicles sold in emerging markets. The models, none of which was equipped with airbags, all posed a “high risk of life-threatening injuries,” NCAP warned.
The safety group added that the crash structures of most of the models it tested were so weak that adding airbags would have contributed little protection for occupants.
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