Airbags, Speed Alerts, Parking Sensors mandatory from 2019

The Union Road Transport Ministry has approved the installation of compulsory airbags and speed limit reminders in all cars from 1st July 2019. In addition, all cars will also have seat belt reminders, reverse parking sensors and also a manual override switch for central locking systems. As of now these features are not mandatory, but many of the higher variants of cars have these features.

As per a Transport Ministry official, “The new cars will be fitted with a system that issues audio alerts when the speed crosses 80kmph. The alert will be sharper when the vehicle crosses 100kmph, and non-stop when it’s over 120 kmph.” Car manufacturers will have to provide this feature in all cars.  Currently some cars come fitted with speed limit alerts, which can be set according to one’s preference and can also be switched off.

Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari has already approved the above features in cars for extra for passenger and pedestrian safety.  Road accidents in India have been on the rise and measures for controlling these accidents need to be taken. While many would argue that road conditions need to be addressed first, features like airbags, reverse parking sensors and speed limit alerts do help in adding to a lot of active and passive safety in cars.

The year 2016 accounted for over 74,000 of deaths due to overspeeding. The total number of deaths recorded were 1.51 lakhs. The speed limit alerts would help drives be in control of the speeds they drive at. It will also act as a catalyst in reducing overspeeding, specially on most of our roads being unguarded.

The manual override system would help passengers in exiting the car in case of an electric failure. There have been many cases reported of passengers being trapped inside the car due to such failures. While many high end cars have an auto-unlocking feature on impact, this manual override would be helpful if fitted on all cars.

The official further added, “To reduce the possibility of accidents while parking in reverse gear, the provision of reverse parking alert is being introduced. When the car is put in reverse gear, the feature will give an indication to the driver whether there are objects in the rear monitoring range,” said the official. This feature would be one of the most helpful ones, we believe, as it it would do away with the need to install annoyingly loud reverse horns. These revers horns are banned by RTO and even the NGT (National Green Tribunal), however, many car owners continue to use them, despite being an offence.

It is also believed that the process of implementing crash test norms for vehicles would be expedited. Passenger safety is of utmost importance around the world and India being one of the fastest growing markets, needs to implement these norms at the earliest.

Many car manufacturers have already started offering dual airbags as standard across their car models.

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