Team-BHP - Accidents in India

I don’t think any car can survive such a horrific accident. While I feel sorry for the loss of lives, it is not always the build quality that determines the outcomes of the accident but several other factors.

What is to be blamed though is solely the Driver of the car. No NCAP Ratings or anything else can save you if you drive as a lunatic. What angers me is that he took the lives of many others with him. Clearly by looking at the pictures you can see it has suffered a major impact and mostly might be due to over-speeding and might car getting toppled after it.

Again I might be wrong as no CCTV footage is present.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ex-innova-guy (Post 5633375)

We cannot go on discounting the build quality even if fault is with driver.
Safe cars do help people survive even high speed crashes and there are many examples of that.

However, not a single survivor shows that one who would care for his/her and loved ones lives won't buy a Kia.

Further although Seltos' GNCAP rating is 3, it was just able to enter the 3 range (practically rating is higher 2 level) with unstable shell.

You can even go ahead and check the difference between the SP2i platform of Seltos which is "specially" made for India (and some other countries).

It has less high strength steel as compared to SP2 (Seltos platform used in countries like US)- that is one major speciality of this light platform.

This platform is also the reason another Seltos car broke into 2 halves after an accident.

If platform is weak, naturally car would be unsafe and driving at high speed can lead to casualties in case of accidents.

There are no details of the actual accident, still there is already blame going to driver, in defense of the build quality.

My opinion, in order to maintain the quality standards of posts - TBHP should ban such youtube videos which have no factual details but only generic commentary to grab eyeballs based on photographs available on social media.

Such videos do not bring any new information nor learnings, other than promoting biases and subsequent futile debates in absence of actual facts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RDS (Post 5633371)

Kia Seltos - one of latest accidents. Kia proves it's poor build quality once again in one more accident.
All 5 dead..

What we see in the video are the remnants of the car after the people have been extricated from it. This would involve cutting/breaking/bending metal parts to dislodge them. Chances of it looking more gory is natural.

We have no information whether the people inside were wearing seatbelts or not. What we have in general are plain assumptions.

The blame usually rests with the driver. Also, some unforeseen circumstances, but rarely is a car to blame. The choice of car is a personal one. There are literally millions of cars running in the country that are tin cans, but don't get involved in accidents.

I'm an advocate for safe cars and for active safety features, but not everyone prefers a rear wash/wipe and defogger to a touchscreen or a sunroof. Can't blame them.

While no one is advocating for people to drive over speed limits, it is simply a fact that when an accident does happen, there are better odds of you surviving in a car with a stronger structure, body shell and NCAP rating than one with a borderline 3 star rating and unstable body shell (Seltos scraped into 3-star territory by a margin of .03)

The argument of "they would not have survived in any car" is not the point - these incidents are mere reminders that we as buyers need to maximize odds of survival when such an accident does occur.
While things like defensive driving, road manners etc obviously play a part, keeping all such factors equal, if you had to simulate the same accident with two cars, you are simply more likely to survive in a car with higher structural integrity which the Koreans do not offer.

Until as a time they stop blatantly cost cutting on the bodyshell (SP2i vs SP2), the Koreans will remain a fancy, convenient ride to be used PURELY for city purposes. I would never personally ride or sit in a Korean car on the highways.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sumeethaldankar (Post 5633829)

. Since these cars are well-built, won't they inflict more damage to a pedestrian than a Maruti would, considering they have tougher sheet metal?

All modern cars today have pedestrian safety measures, that's why the bumpers and fenders in new cars are FRP and are clipped on for the most part and not screwed to the frame.

The bonnets of the car has been raised further to reduce impact and chances of being thrown over the car or hit the windshield (pedestrian speeds).

It's the monocoque frame that is made of ultra high strength steel (excuse the terminology) and provide passenger safety. The body panels by themselves are meant to absorb and dissipate impact from the frame.

So unless it involves an incident at a higher speed,, the difference in impact on a pedestrian is negligible. However, the same cannot be said for the car with thinner panels or sub-par structures.

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Originally Posted by SutilSapien (Post 5633609)

Spot On - Life is relative, not absolute. Every decision matters when something like this happens.
And this mentality that this happened to the other and cannot happen to me must go!!

Absolute numbers can tell which vehicles are safer.

The accidents that will be captured in CCTVs would be much lesser than the number of accidents captured later in pics.

It makes complete sense to not judge the culprit but at least disclosing the facts (numbers later can be used to derive judgements) makes sense.

Hence even these news, videos and pictures can show a story on which company values customer's lives vs which company values sales more.

From my perspective, there must be a national public database showcasing these numbers including vehicles and lives lost, even if it is available to number crunching agencies only to make intelligent data for public to consume.

Let the truth be out and we will see some real action on manufacturer's part to save their brand and stop treating lives of Bhartiya people as third class citizens.

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Originally Posted by StarrySky (Post 5627665)

So rather than lack of defensive driving, I think the Swift guy wanted to make it as difficult as possible for the Thar. In fact, the Swift's brake lights do not come on until the Thar (almost) hits the pick-up. With the Swift not slowing down, the Thar had nowhere to go.

The blame for the accident rests mainly with the Thar driver, as he was doing an illegal overtake. But the Swift driver is not an innocent party, in my view.

I actually support this conclusion. It is a common behaviour among idiots on our roads. A milder version of this is visible when you're going in the leftmost lane or in the middle lane, and there is a vehicle to the right of you. As long as you don't switch on your indicators, the idiot will keep following you in the parallel lane a few metres behind. The moment you turn on the right indicator to change lanes, suddenly he would have some sort of emergency to speed up to prevent you from changing lanes.

Absolute bell*nds.

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Originally Posted by AutoNoob (Post 5633128)

[b], I would wait for the outcome of the FIR/ court case before arriving at any conclusion.

I wouldn't. Even if true, this would be shoved under the carpet. Long back in 2013/14 there was an incident involving an Aston Martin and some other vehicle.

The Maserati was rumoured to belong to one of the Ambani scions. Every single online article was scuttled in a couple of hours and no mention of any names in the print edition of newspapers.

We still belong to 2 countries, one for regular folks and the other for the rich and connected.

Thankfully, the net doesn't forget.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/naaznee...h=4323684212c1

This one too, even if the airbags were missing, would be chalked into driver error, physics, projectiles and probabilities.

Essentially anything but damage to the billionaire

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sandy Damodaran (Post 5635084)

Thankfully, the net doesnt forget.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/naaznee...h=4323684212c1

Quote:

... Meantime, the Audi owner has modified her initial statement and identified Joshi as the driver of the Aston Martin. She and the owner of the Hyundai car that was damaged in the accident, no longer have anything to complain about. On Christmas day they took delivery of a brand new Audi A6 and a Skoda Superb sedan respectively.

What can one do to maximise the chance of being in an accident with one of these these people? :cool: