2018-19 is about going to witness a milestone for cars safety in India. As per Ministry of Road Transport of India, the country faces about 150,000 mortalities each year along with half million injuries due to road accidents, which is highest across the world. Annually, more than 50% of the total road crashes were due to over-speeding, and 6% were due to overtaking. Several injuries can be reduced by implementing proper active and passive safety equipment in cars and airbags, which are the basic passive safety standards.
Indian economy with its automobile industry is witnessing an impressive growth since the last few years. This factor will provide an impressive growth rate to the Indian airbag market. The sales of the passenger cars is increasing continuously in the country. By unit sales volume, the Indian passenger car market has shown an impressive growth rate of 8.8% in 2017 year-on-year (YoY) basis and India had registered 3.22 million new passenger cars in the same year. Prior to this, car sales have shown a growth of 7% in YoY basis. Indian car market is one of the fastest growing car markets among all the major markets across the globe.
The government of India is fully determined to adopt new safety standards for cars. It has implemented several rules and regulations regarding the safety of the driver & other passengers in the vehicle and pedestrians on the road in the current time scenario. The Union Road Ministry of India has mandated the installation of airbags in cars from Oct, 2019 as a basic safety standard for all vehicles, including old and new. In addition, the government is also on its verge to mandate the speed limit reminders, seat belt reminders, reverse parking sensors and manual override switch for central locking systems in passenger cars. All the new vehicle models launched after Oct, 2017 are mandated to have compulsory airbags in the cars, whereas old models have to be equipped with airbags by Oct, 2019.
The strong determination of the government, which is clearly visible might help them implement these regulations earlier to deadlines. It is suggested by some reports that the regulation of airbag installation would begin six months prior to the deadline of Oct, 2019, however official notification and updates are yet to come. Along with these safety norms, India has founded Bharat New Vehicle Safety Assessment Program (BNVSAP) in 2014 to access vehicle safety. It is a vehicle evaluating program, which offers safety rating to vehicles, after they are taken through various crash tests. The program is similar to various European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) offered by various organizations in the country. The program has been delayed due to unavailability of technical labs and infrastructure at that time and it is expected that it will start evaluating vehicles from 2018.
It is estimated that the car prices will observe a hike of 8%-10% due to increased safety features though they are justified to provide safety of a driver and his family. According to data available on leading India car search venture, CarDekho.com, in 2016, around1,200 cars were available, of which around 1000 cars have at least driver airbag installed in them. Maruti Suzuki is one of the leading 4-wheeler manufacturers in the country, which offers airbags in 133 car variants out of 166 total variants. The company features airbags in its seven models from 2015, which is near to 75%-80% of the all-over profile in the country. It is expected that the company will fulfill the requirement much prior to deadline. Similarly, Hyundai offers 88 cars variants with airbags, out of the total 102 variants available. Out of 328 Sedan variants, 291 and out of 323 SUVs 374 offer airbags in their cars. All these factors will drive the Indian airbag market and are expected to provide an immense surge during the forecast period.