[PrasannaDhana]

Saw this poor lorry this morning at a busy junction in Trichy. As it was early morning, traffic was scarce.

The front axle is kaput. It is a mild incline but guess the lorry was overloaded. No signs of anyone getting injured.

[for_cars1]

Originally Posted by shaktisarangi

...Attitude towards safety in our country is a problem, however that is not an excuse for manufacturers to make unsafe cars ...

Originally Posted by shibujp

... All of them are designing to the same exact safety specifications.

Isn't the auto manufacturer also responsible for ensuring the safety of the auto's occupants?

Blame the govt, and mint money. [/quote]

One can't blame manufacturers, they are all accountable to meet the safety standards set by the Govt., and the cars manufactured for Indian market are obviously meeting the Indian safety standards in order to do business here.

The problem lies in the definition of Indian safety standards which is grossly inadequate and outdated.

Everybody values their lives so all desire to be safe at the end of the day. Indians are no exception.
But just the desire to be safe will not bring safer cars, manufacturers may or may not be morally obliged but they better be legally obliged and have no choice but to comply with the Govt safety standards if they want to remain in business.

Our safety standards are definitely evolving for the better, as we have seen in recent years.
However the following aspects are the need of the hour:
1. The Govt should not come under the pressure of the powerful manufacturer's lobby and set lax/ lower/ inadequate safety standards for India.
2. The pace of Indian safety standards improvement is not fast enough.
It is better for the Govt. to directly adopt established and evolved safety standards like EU norms and make it a law, the same EU crash resistance/safety norms can be copy pasted and made a mandatory compliance requirement.

[bigben]

Saw this Scorpio at the entry to the Appa junction on the ORR.

The right front tyre was missing and it looked like the car had toppled and slid on its side. Don't have any info on the occupants and how this happened.

[IshaanIan]

Originally Posted by shibujp

What's insightful for me in these videos is the two different approaches to attaining passenger safety by Volvo and Audi. Even the 2017 Audi Q7 follows the same approach demonstrated by the 2012 Audi. Volvo deflects while Audi stops in it's tracks and does a 90 degree turn.

Drive on,
Shibu

I'm not sure about whether they are two equally performing approaches though. If you bother to read through all the data from the crash tests, you will see that the Audi incurs over double the footrest and toepan intrusion when compared to the Volvo which gives the audi only an "acceptable" and not "good" rating for injury measures on leg/foot. The approach that Volvo uses is the more forward thinking one not sure what limitations are there that are preventing all manufacturers from following the same. I remember that back in 2014 when midsize sedans were crash tested, only the Mazda 3, Volvo S60 and Suzuki Kizashi received "good" ratings across the board in the small frontal overlap crash test and they all followed the same deflecting approach of the Volvo. Cars like the A4, 3 series, Accord, Jetta etc received only "acceptable" or "marginal" ratings in the same test and all of them performed in the same manner by stopping in their trackes and turning 90 degrees. If you think about it, the deflecting method actually makes more sense as well.

[shibujp]

Originally Posted by IshaanIan

I'm not sure about whether they are two equally performing approaches though. If you bother to read through all the data from the crash tests, you will see that the Audi incurs over double the footrest and toepan intrusion when compared to the Volvo which gives the audi only an "acceptable" and not "good" rating for injury measures on leg/foot. If you think about it, the deflecting method actually makes more sense as well.

I'll admit that I did not go through the crash data and that is a very good point you bring up. I too felt that Volvo's approach makes more sense.

However with Volvo's approach a potentially disabled car is going to plough on ahead into an unknown situation necessitating additional safety precaution to protect occupants from a secondary crash. Which will be costlier.

To me it seems that Audi's approach requires a stronger passenger frame compared to the Volvo's. At the risk of seemingly boiling down a human aspect into harsh engineering compromise they might have decided that the trade off was better. A weight comparison also shows that the Audi is around 300kgs heavier than the Volvo.

What I wanted to understand and unsuccessfully Googled for was the different approaches which seem to exist on meeting safety standards.

Originally Posted by venkyhere

Sorry to have stoked this topic. There will always be two sides to the question of how much maruti suzuki values the life of an indian. There is a dedicated thread here :
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-s...tatements.html

we belong to two opposite camps. Lets agree to disagree. Peace.

Sure. The forum is for sharing and understanding different viewpoints/opinions. But I belong to only one safety camp in this respect. The one that advocates safety and safe driving. I do not think that it is the car that is the single most important aspect in ensuring a safe driving environment in the same way that a closed door guarantees safety. With respect to Maruti, my only take is that I do not believe that they are any more or less concerned about passenger safety than any other manufacturer in India.

Drive on,
Shibu

[IshaanIan]

Originally Posted by shibujp

However with Volvo's approach a potentially disabled car is going to plough on ahead into an unknown situation necessitating additional safety precaution to protect occupants from a secondary crash. Which will be costlier.

By that logic even the disabled Audi could expose itself to being T-Boned.

Originally Posted by shibujp

To me it seems that Audi's approach requires a stronger passenger frame compared to the Volvo's. At the risk of seemingly boiling down a human aspect into harsh engineering compromise they might have decided that the trade off was better. A weight comparison also shows that the Audi is around 300kgs heavier than the Volvo.

The weight difference could be due to many factors. For example the Audi is longer and wider and the tested vehicle uses a 3 liter V6 compared to the Volvos 2 liter 4 cylinder motor as tested. Also the weight difference between the tested vehicles is around 200 kilos. I'm talking about the 2018 Q7 and 2018 XC90. Moreover the base XC90 is around 100 kilos heavier than the base Q7 and the top end is 100 kilos lighter than the Q7 so it's not like that weight difference can be put down to the crash structures of these vehicles.

Originally Posted by shibujp

What I wanted to understand and unsuccessfully Googled for was the different approaches which seem to exist on meeting safety standards.

I think the difference between the way that the cars react to these crashes could either be due to the way they are engineered to do so or, and what I think is more likely, it could be due to the way the engines in these cars are mounted. The engine is longitudinally mounted in the Audi and Transversely mounted in the Volvo.

Originally Posted by shibujp

Sure. The forum is for sharing and understanding different viewpoints/opinions. But I belong to only one safety camp in this respect. The one that advocates safety and safe driving. I do not think that it is the car that is the single most important aspect in ensuring a safe driving environment in the same way that a closed door guarantees safety. With respect to Maruti, my only take is that I do not believe that they are any more or less concerned about passenger safety than any other manufacturer in India.

I agree with you that driver is also important when it comes to safety. Another aspect that is really important to me is how confidence inspiring and dynamically capable the car is. At the end of the day evasive maneuvers could be considered as primary safety in dangerous near-accident situations.

[kiku007]

Originally Posted by shibujp

With respect to Maruti, my only take is that I do not believe that they are any more or less concerned about passenger safety than any other manufacturer in India.

Drive on,
Shibu

Passenger safety has traditionally been low on priority for Maruti. You can see this in the products and the brilliant words of wisdom provided by their bosses. Being in Numero Uno position for so long and having absolute dominance on the market and being profitable, they SHOULD have done so much more.

Things went so far, that companies like Ford wanted to copy Maruti's success and ending up making cars like the Aspire.

Sorry for going off topic.

[Surprise]

http://www.thehindu.com/news/nationa...le23858533.ece

Car smashed

Their car was hit by a vehicle, driven by G. Sakthi Saravanan, 51, of Perambalur, near the Four Roads Junction around 12.30 a.m. Mr. Saravanan, who was on his way to Chennai, apparently lost control of his car, hit the median and careened to the opposite carriageway before colliding with the car.

All those bound for Kodaikanal died on the spot as the vehicle was smashed completely in the impact of the collision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vs_QJyfhKA

Tavera was smashed badly & its alleged Travera also got hit from the rear. Not sure if seat belt could have helped to save a few occupants.

[arun_josie]

Coimbatore - Nagercoil(Kanyakumari) private bus toppled over an Alto near Dindigul, yesterday. As per the news article the driver of the Alto escaped with minor injuries, no other occupants in the car.

[kiku007]

That Alto Driver is the luckiest person on earth.

[Midas]

Originally Posted by arun_josie

Coimbatore - Nagercoil(Kanyakumari) private bus toppled over an Alto near Dindigul, yesterday. As per the news article the driver of the Alto escaped with minor injuries, no other occupants in the car.

:o He is indeed really lucky.

Based on this, will people start saying that Suzuki is the safest as the driver was saved even after a bus toppled on it? Few pages back there was a post on a mangled dezire and auto with the claim that it's due to the auto t-boning the dezire. Obviously that was not the case and there are many other factors which are unknown to us.

But social media and whatsapp has started spreading several stories based on this, in some cases a veiled ad / defamation attempt by competitors. Because, some of those stories are accompanied by less damaged photos of a tata or some other car, which would be from an accident with totally different circumstances.

My request to everyone in this responsible forum is to not just blanket blame a manufacturer or car just based on isolated incidents. (I'm aware that Suzuki cars in India don't come near German cars, Fiat etc. in terms of build quality.) People take tbhp as a reliable reference and we should try to reduce such serious allegations that unfavourably help the competitors.

I'm still waiting for the day when Govt and car manufacturers takes safety features very seriously in India. Right now our safety norms are outdated, safety features except seat belt are optional and manufacturers do the minimum to meet norms.

[haria]

Originally Posted by kiku007

That Alto Driver is the luckiest person on earth.

+100 to that.
Oh boy! How did he manage to escape ?
From the pic it the driver side of the car is nicely squashed!
Either he must be having a hell of a reflex or he was thrown out. Either way, very very lucky! Still curious how he managed to get out with just minor injuries!

Originally Posted by Midas

I'm still waiting for the day when Govt and car manufacturers takes safety features very seriously in India. Right now our safety norms are outdated, safety features except seat belt are optional and manufacturers do the minimum to meet norms.

More importantly, the driver awareness is very very primitive. I don't know about other cities, but at least in Bangalore, most of the driving schools rarely teach anything beyond basic operations/control of the car. Driving license is also easily obtained. So many people are having DLs who have minimal knowledge about how to drive safely. To make matters worse, the engines these days are quite powerful and this coupled with some big roads (which can have quite a few death-traps), make for a perfect recipe for disasters in making!

[Midas]

Originally Posted by haria

More importantly, the driver awareness is very very primitive

Don't get me started on that. Road manners, road sense, following traffic rules etc. are alien concept to majority of indian drivers. While many are not aware of these since they were never taught about these, the rest just choose to ignore them.

Due to this, the indian roads are really unpredictable and I think self driving cars can never enter Indian roads at least for the next few decades. Unless there is a radical change in the mindset of people and the system here, I don't know how the humans or computers can avoid accidents here. That's why this is one of the longest threads in the forum. Sorry for the long rant.

[treadmark]

Got this on WhatsApp group, looks like this had happened near Volvo Plant Bangalore this evening.
Also look at the post from someone who was behind this Polo guy, let the auto driver rest in peace!


Cheers!

[sridhu]

Got this image of a toppled Honda Jazz on WhatsApp.



Very sketchy details in the report as well