Minister of Road Transport & Highways, Nitin Gadkari recently inaugurated the Command and Control Center of Bharat NCAP at the Central Institute of Road Transport (CIRT) in Pune. The Bharat NCAP centre will be the administrative setup for awarding star ratings for cars tested under the BNCAP Vehicle Safety Regime, launched on August 22, 2023.
Similar to Euro NCAP and Global NCAP, the Bharat NCAP test protocol will test cars on three parameters, such as child occupant protection, adult occupant protection and fitment of safety assist technologies.
Car manufacturers can submit their vehicles for testing under the Bharat NCAP program. Based on their performance, cars will be given safety ratings from one star to five stars.
In the frontal impact test, the car will be crash-tested into an offset deformable barrier at 64 kmph, while in the side impact test, the vehicle will be crash-tested at 50 kmph. Under the pole side impact test, it is necessary for all vehicles to have a test rating of 3 stars and above. As of now, around 30 vehicles have already been nominated by several manufacturers for BNCAP testing.
In another news development, Nitin Gadkari said that six airbags in cars will not be mandatory going forward. Last year in January, Gadkari approved a draft that read six airbags will be mandatory for all vehicles in the Indian market. However, this regulation was not implemented across the country.
Furthermore, the Indian Minister of Road Transport & Highways said that various car manufacturers have already made six airbags as standard across all the variants.
