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AUTO PUNDITZ

2020 GNCAP Safety Rated Passenger Vehicles in India

More than 1.5 lakh deaths were recorded in 2019, due to fatal road accidents in India. It is not mere statistics, but a grave and alarming reality.


Passenger vehicle safety in India was brought into limelight in 2014 by Global NCAP, by crash testing some of the then prominent selling cars in India. Global New Car Assessment Programme (Global NCAP) is a UK-based independent charity, focused on consumer oriented vehicle safety initiatives (UK registered charity number: 1141798). You can read more about them here – http://www.globalncap.org/about/.

Major impetus for PV car safety came from Government of India in 2016, by making Driver side airbag and ABS, as mandatory equipment for all PV, from 1st July 2019.

Since 2014, GNCAP has had tested more and more cars, and urged car manufactures in India, to be more responsible and sensitive towards PV safety.

In 2020, 43% of total passenger cars sold in India were at certain point tested by GNCAP, and awarded safety rating score. 5% of all the cars sold in 2020 were rated 5 star (highest) in crash test, and guess what, all of them comes from home grown PV manufacturer – Tata Motors and Mahindra, more on that later.


Safety Rating Distribution

  1. Volume is highly skewed towards 2 star rated products, all are hatchbacks which forms the majority of sales

  2. Even with driver airbag, Maruti S-Presso scored 0 star

  3. Price point at which cars are sold in India has no significant correlation to safety ratings

  1. Best selling cars from Maruti, Hyundai and Kia tilts the scale on lower safety rating side

Body shell integrity

Active and passive safety feature is critical, but what is more vital is, how overall car body absorbs, channelize and dissipate collision impact energy through structural members of the car body.

  1. New generation product from Mahindra and Tata have been found with stable bodyshell

  1. Stable bodyshell does means better score

  2. Tata Tigor/Tiago were only products to score 4 star despite unstable bodyshell

GNCAP note on Tata Tigor and Tiago : The protection offered to the driver and passenger’s head and neck was good. Driver’s chest showed marginal protection and passenger’s chest showed adequate protection. Driver and passenger’s knees showed marginal protection as they impact dangerous structures behind the facia. The bodyshell was rated as unstable and it was not capable of withstanding further loadings. Footwell area was rated as unstable. The vehicle has standard SBR for driver and passenger. The car has standard ABS.

To be continued…

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