Six airbags to be made mandatory for cars: Gadkari

Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari said the government has decided to ask automobile manufacturers to make provision of six airbags in every car.

Since each airbag in a car costs just Rs 800, the government decided to ask automobile makers to make provision for more airbags as an improved safety feature in cars, the minister informed Parliament.

At present, only two airbags are mandatory in every car; the government has proposed four more for the safety of passengers sitting in the rear seats. Soon final notification on this will be issued, Gadkari said in Rajya Sabha.

With road accidents claiming more than one lakh lives every year in India, Gadkari informed the upper house that a target had been set to reduce the number of accidents in the country, and the resulting deaths, by half by 2024 and for this “black spots” were being removed.

The minister also said that the Union government was working on the ‘Bharat New Car Assessment Programme’ to give star rating to vehicles after they are subjected to safety checks of world standards. Before introducing any vehicle in the market, crash-tests will have to be carried out as per these standards mandatorily, he said.

A section of car makers has been pressuring the government against installing four additional airbags, citing that the cost of the cars will increase.

Although it has only one per cent of the world’s vehicles on road, India accounts for 11 per cent of the global deaths in road accidents—the highest in the world—according to a recent report by the World Bank.

According to the road transport ministry, 3,66,138 road accidents were reported by the states and the union territories in the calendar year 2020, in which 1,31,714 persons died and 3,48,279 were injured.