Starting October 2015 Front Crash Test Mandatory For All

The Indian government plans to make cars on roads more safer and as a first step towards it has made it compulsory for all cars plying on the Indian roads to undergo a frontal crash test at 56kmph as early as October 2015.

This would be the minimum safety requirement that all cars have to undergo and addition to it, automobile companies can also put their models through testing benchmarks devised under the proposed Bharat New Vehicle Safety Assessment Programme (BNVSAP) which will give Star Ratings to models based on their safety test outcome.

The BNVSAP is planned to be launched in October 2017 and all new cars will be given a Star Rating on their safety score for front and rear crash tests. One of the primary issues that the government will have to solve is the availability of enough test facilities in the country to carry of such kind of testing.

These ratings will enable the Indian consumer, especially the one for whom safety matters the most, make informed decision while buying his next car. Such safety star ratings are given to cars launched in the developed markets such the American and European markets.

In USA, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) give safety start ratings where the IIHS is a non-profit organization funded by insurance companies and NHTSA is a federal government organization.

The NHTSA test frontal crash at 35mph (approx. 56 kpmh) and gives Star Rating on the scale of 1 to 5 stars (complete assessment involves 3 different types of tests) while the IIHS test frontal crash at 40mph (approx. 64 kpmh) and ranks cars as Poor, Marginal, Acceptable and Good, with Good being the highest possible rating (complete assessment involves 5 different types of tests).

Thus we can fairly say that in the near future, provided the rules are implemented, the Indian buyer will have much safer car in his hands!