Beyond the stars

Global NCAP is an important measure of safety but it's not the ultimate metric. There is more to road fatalities than a star rating. Hormazd Sorabjee takes a look at the system in the context of India's realities.

-  Hormazd Sorabjee

Ever since the Global NCAP began crash testing cars in 1997, it has hijacked the narrative on safety and their star ratings have become the de facto measure for consumers by which the safety of a car should be judged.

What has been completely ignored is the big leap in safety norms that were mandated in 2019 for all cars sold in India. The AIS-098 and AIS-099 standards which Indian cars have to meet, are broadly based on the latest UN international standards. They are pretty comprehensive tests which also include a side impact protection test that was missing all these years in the GNCAP tests.

It's only since 2022 that GNCAP has made side impact tests mandatory with a new and tougher protocol that also makes the fitment of electronic stability control (ESC) as standard in cars to get a five-star rating.

The current Global NCAP tests are centred around a frontal crash test into an offset deformable barrier (OBD) at 64 km/h which is significantly higher than the 56 km/h limit set by the AISO 098-099 test protocol which all Indian cars have to mandatorily meet.

As far as safety goes, scoring well in GNCAP's 64 km/h offset crash test as opposed to the less stringent 56 km/h test makes the GNCAP scores an important consideration that is increasingly becoming a purchasing decision for car buyers.

Indian manufacturers Tata and Mahindra have hitched some of their products onto the GNCAP bandwagon and engineered them to achieve the maximum five-star rating to take the moral high ground on safety. Recently VW and Skoda too secured five-star ratings for the Taigun and Kushaq respectively and have been publicising the results with a marketing blitz.