Additional safety equipment to be mandatory on cars from 2019

After decades of taking the backseat, vehicle safety in India is finally being taken seriously - partly thanks to the ‘safer cars for India’ campaign by Global NCAP.

In a fresh development towards road safety in India, the Road Transport and Highway Ministry has added seat belt warnings, front airbags, speed warning alert, and reverse parking alert system - as mandatory features in Automotive Industry Standard (AIS) 145.

This rule will be implemented from March 2019. Furthermore, any vehicle undergoing the soon-to-be launched Bahrat NCAP crash test must have the aforementioned safety gear as standard, in order to earn a perfect 5/5 safety rating.

Some of the key objectives of the AIS 145 are to emphasise on use of seat belts, avoid road casualties due to over speeding, and minimise any overruns during reversing. As a whole, it is focused on reducing vehicle related fatalities. The AIS functions directly under the Automotive Research Association of India.

As a part of reducing road accidents in India by 50 per cent by 2020, the Road Transport and Highway Ministry believes that cars in India must be equipped with the exact same safety standards as found globally.

In the past, Global NCAP has crash tested numerous strong selling cars in India, and granted a 0/5 rating to a sizeable number of them.