The Gandhidham ES Accident Quote:
Originally Posted by dkaile I always thought it was very hard to topple a car and only very rash and negligent drivers were able to do so. Nice to hear a different perspective.
Its also so re-assuring to see a TeamBhp moderator 'guaranteeing' the dynamics of a new car. So its just the driver's fault that caused this topple, which is good to know. I just love the car's design and with a TeamBhp backed assurance, it will enable many innocent and not-so-expert car buyers to place money on the Eco Sport. |
I was a first hand witness to this incident. And incidentally I along with my friend were there to get assurance regarding this same Stability thing.
My friend is on the the lookout for a replacement for his Manza which he has driven close to a Lac Km till date in 2.5 years of his ownership. Now Manza has served him very well but there was one incident which negated the goodness of this car in his mind. One fine afternoon he was driving on NH-8 at around 120 and there is suddenly this man on a bike rushing to cross the highway, my friend tried to brake and to avoid hitting the bike swerved towards right resulting in his car going over the small divider and hitting the bike with the biker going over his car after hitting the windshield. Luckily there was no topple and no serious injury. His was Manza Elan so the airbags did their part.
Now the above story because of this: After this incident he has been a very cautious driver and each and every test drive of his included this high speed stability under braking test mandatory. After lot of research and my help he had finally decided on New Ford Fiesta. He was happy with the dynamics and braking after all the road tests of the comparable cars.
I did tell him to wait for a couple of days and check out EcoSport before finalizing.
Now we did check out the ES together but could not get test drive on day 1 due to the huge rush. Next day afternoon he went with his family to get the final nod from his wife. They liked everything and then went on the test drive. As soon as he finished his test drive he called me up and told me that he is not happy with the braking under high speed and he sensed instability. He requested me to check it out again. I along with one of my other friend went for the ES test drive in the evening (we both own Punto). Frankly we both were happy with the dynamics and braking. I called my friend and told him lets have a final drive next day to clear his doubts.
So today morning we went to the dealership and after haggling against the depot charges/45K mandatory accessories we decided to take a final test drive first and then continue our discussion (although the dealership had given us the final word that if you do not take the 45K Acc then we will not book the car).
Now we are waiting outside the dealership for the car to return from the test drive and discussing the pricing angle when I hear a loud bang and when I look towards the sound I see the ES flying in the air vertically with its nose down and finally coming to rest on the roof as shown in the pictures already shared. I shouted inside the dealership the warning and along with my friend ran towards the car. There were three people in the car. Two in front were the prospective buyers and the SA was sitting in the back. By the time we reached the car the SA had come out unhurt from the rear glass area and the other two persons also got out from broken rear glass area. The airbags had deployed (it was the Titanium+ model), the car was leaking what looked like coolant from front, one of the tyres had flown to the other road lane and had landed just infront of an autorickshaw. The autorickshaw driver was unable to believe his luck. By this time huge crowd had gathered so no detailed analysis could be done.
I and my friend did try to check out the reason. Now the accident has happened on a Eight lane National highway wherein two lanes on each side are reserved as service roads and the centre two as one way highway. The centre two lanes are nearly finished but not opened to public and the test drive was happening on one of this road albeit on the wrong side. But since its empyt stretch as of now so that fine. We went a further down the road from where the car had come and about 50 feet ahead we could see the impact point on the RCC median. Now as per the person driving the car (who is a friend of one of my friends) the accident happened when he tried hard braking at a speed of 120. This is verified by on the spot highway workers who confirmed that the car was in high speed and it suddenly skidded and then hit the median head on and then toppled over. We looked at the highway and we could clearly see the tyre marks leading from right side lane of the road towards the left side in a soft curve and directly leading to the impact location. Mind you these marks looked like hard braking marks and not skid marks so I am pretty sure the ABS was working here. The entire accident happened within 100-150ft length. Driver applying the brakes at 120, the vehicle swerving towards the median hitting the median on its left front side and then literally standing up in the air and then toppling and finally coming to rest on its roof. In the meelee we even were not able to check whether the side doors were openable or not.
Now even if I leave this unfortunate accident to drivers error I cannot discount the fact that we were present there and awaiting our turn to actually check out this stability factor of which my friend was not at all happy with(he is a Mech. Engineer so not exactly a noob and with 1Lac Km behind his belt he sure knows how a Manza drives). One thing is sure God has given my friend a clear indication not to buy ES(he even would have felt vindicated). For the rest of us it sure makes sense to once again request the experts to specifically check out this aspect once again in detail.
In hindsight I remember myself and my other punto owning friend discussing within ourselves that the steering of the ES does not get properly weighted at high speeds unlike our Punto (this was factor which we didnt like). What I mean is even at high speeds the steering of ES felt very nimble. Could this be the one factor responsible....? My Dad too drives a Manza and we were contemplating replacing it with ES so I surely look forward to answers/expert comments in this case. But till the Dealerships stop their fleecing through various "Mandatory charges" we are not proceeding any further.... |