Six airbags to be mandatory in all cars from October, 2022

Over the past few years, safety and crash test norms have undergone various changes to make Indian cars safer.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways recently revealed that six airbags will soon be mandatory in all cars that can seat up to eight people. The same information was also conveyed by Nitin Gadkari, the Minister of Road Transport and Highways, via his Twitter account.

The statement from the Ministry said, 'A draft notification has been issued on January 14, 2022, which mandates that vehicles of category M1, manufactured after October 1, 2022, shall be fitted with two side/side torso airbags, one each for the persons occupying front row outboard seating positions, and two side curtain/tube airbags, one each for the persons occupying outboard seating positions.'

Essentially, all new cars will have to have front airbags, side airbags for the front-row passengers, and curtain airbags, which stretch from the A-pillar to the C-pillar of a vehicle. This addition can lead to a price increase of mass-market cars by Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000. The price hike is expected to be steeper in cars that don’t sell in huge numbers. This change will mostly affect cars under Rs 15 lakh, as these are the ones that don’t always offer six airbags.

As far as the October 2022 deadline is concerned, it might extend by a few months, if manufacturers feel it is too short a notice to re-engineer their smaller cars for additional airbags. However, we don’t expect the government to be too lenient, as new emissions norms, crash test norms, and over vehicular safety norms have been pushed through quite aggressively in the last few years.

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