Cars, SUVs in India could get six airbags as standard

Fitment of six airbags to all cars and SUVs in India could become mandatory moving forward. Following a meeting today with the representatives from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, tweeted, “In the interest of passenger safety, I have appealed all private vehicle manufacturers to compulsorily provide a minimum of 6 airbags across all variants and segments of the vehicle.”

• Dual airbags to become mandatory for all cars, SUVs from December 31, 2021
• 6 airbags could become mandatory in future
• Will help cars become safer but will make them substantially costlier too

Six airbags to improve levels of passenger safety

A driver-side airbag had become compulsory for all passenger vehicles in the country from July 1, 2019. Starting April 1 this year, a front passenger airbag became a mandatory fitment for all new models, with existing models stipulated to comply from August 31 initially, though the deadline was then pushed back to December 31, 2021.

With Gadkari’s latest announcement, the count of airbags in every passenger four-wheeler could to rise to six, though the minister didn’t reveal a timeline for the move.

For the uninitiated, the driver and passenger front airbags are installed in the steering wheel and dashboard, respectively, protecting the first row occupants in the event of a frontal impact. Cars can even be fitted with a pair of airbags in the outboard portions of both the front seats, with another pair installed over the windows on both sides, making for a total of six airbags in the vehicle. The side, and curtain, airbags, as they are respectively called, can protect all the vehicle’s occupants in case of a collision from the sides.

Which automakers will get affected?

Currently, automakers like Maruti Suzuki, Renault and Nissan don’t have any model on sale in India with the provision of six passenger airbags. Other mass market players do offer the increased airbag count in some of their vehicles, albeit often in just the more expensive, higher trims.

Adding more than two airbags in a car would require manufacturers to re-engineer the vehicle structure majorly to accommodate the additional curtain airbags and also to safely deploy them in an event of a collision.  This would also push up costs substantially, thus making the vehicle much more expensive.

As such, when the new regulation does kick into effect, it will be accompanied by a rise in vehicle prices. Luxury carmakers, on the other hand, already meet the upcoming requirement.

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