City car. 25mph avg speed. Itâs fine.
I seem to recall a Youtube video in which a Nissan Tsuru and Nissan Versa are crash-tested, and the Tsuru folded up like a soda can.
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It is really easy for others to criticize the safety performance of cars sold in the Indian market from their homes in the EU or North America earning an average of $60,000 a year and more.
The average wage in India is $5200 a year⌠A Renault Kwid cost $5300
The alternative to a Kwid is a TukTuk for about $3000 or a small motorcycle for $1200 with a family of 5 perched on it.
So is your family of 5 safer in a Kwid, in a TukTuk or on a motorcycle?
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I am allowed to legally ride a 180mph motorcycle wearing shorts , t-shirt and tennis shoes here in Oklahoma . I would be safer in one of those vehicles .
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I just spent 8 hours taking the older driver course to renew my insurance discount. My take away is that the best safety feature of modern machines is the nut behind the wheel. Still trying to figure out why 20% of it was convincing people to give up driving, since only those trying to improve their driving would be taking it. Not like friends and family sit down and take the dang thing together.
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What if a substantial portion of the people taking the course really should give up on driving?
Perhaps that online course could convince them to seek other transportation options.
I have a friend who is convinced that all of the people (essentially everyone⌠) honking in back of his car are wrong, and that everyone should be driving 10-15 mph under the speed limit, as he does. I have tried to get him to sign up for an online Driver Improvement Course, but he balks because it is âtoo expensiveâ.
Instead, he spends his days pulling random objects out of dumpsters and garbage cans, and then renting storage units to store those âtreasuresâ that he will never use. I canât convince him that he is not âsaving moneyâ by retrieving junk from other peopleâs garbage, and then paying money to store that junk.
Yes, he is clearly in an early stage of dementia, andâclearlyâhe should not be driving.
Well sure that was part of it. Doing a self assessment and strategies to deal with aging. But I should explain, the chapter dealing with not driving was mainly targeted at friends and family making observations, making notes for use in the olâ confrontation, and how to report such observed behavior to authorities. I donât know why that was in there since these would not be the people taking the training. The only people taking the training would be âdriversâ, not riders.
Not to be too hard on the folks that put it together since we all know that out facilities change over time and we need to be aware of it and reduce our risk. I donât like to drive on ice and snow anymore so try to avoid it. I donât like bridges anymore. I donât like traffic or animals plus I appreciate some of the advances like rear cameras and blind spot indicators. Thatâs why we took the course and not just for the minimal discount.
Iâve been taking or giving defensive driving courses for 30 years. We spent some time talking about minimizing damage if you canât avoid it, like taking the ditch to avoid a head on. One thing I thought was interesting was they mentioned as we age, the death toll approaches almost as high as âteen agedâ drivers. I thought, thatâs not so bad if you think of the circle of life.
Speaking of the circle of life, I have often thought how ironic it is that we start out as a teenager with no money. Then collect a little, and then many at the end have zero again. Or start out in a dorm, live in luxury for a while, and then end up in smaller and smaller dorm rooms. Start out walking or biking, then great mobility for a while, and then end up walking again or worse. So I think of that and have sympathy when I see the poor guy driving his lawn mower around town. There go I but by the grace . . . 
I have never understood the mentality of riding a motorcycleâespecially here where so many people drive aggressively/play with their cellphone while driving/etc. When I was young, my father had a 1981 Chevette. Even when new, people considered the Chevette to be an unsafe car. We were involved in an accident while my father was driving. He suffered very serious injuries, including several broken ribs, and had to miss an entire year of work to recover. The rest of us suffered minor injuries as well.
Most people would scoff at the idea of riding in a car like that today, on the grounds that itâs just too dangerous, yet those same people would happily get on a motorcycle. This is what I donât understand. If you get in an accident in a Chevette, you will be injured, but if you get in an accident on a motorcycle, the sheriff will be scraping your remains off the pavement.
I donât disagree but the key words are âif you get into an accidentâ. So much of the current thought is on building cars to minimize injuries âwhen you get into an accidentâ. Rather we should be concentrating on avoiding those accidents. Oh sure they are going to happen, no matter what and been there myself, but I always go over in my mind how that could have been avoided in the first place. Then if not possible to avoid, how do you minimize the damage? It just becomes second nature as we drive along to be considering âwhat would I do if this happensâ.
I work and have worked with dozens and dozens of people from India. Iâve worked with companies in India. Yes wages are lowerâŚbut the cost of living is much lower in India then the US. Software engineer in India is paid 1/3rd the US salary. And with that pay they can have servants and nannyâs for their children.
But those EU spec cars with the 4 star crash ratings cost the same in India that they do in the EU. The 1/3 salary makes it harder to buy one.
When I was in my 20s, I witnessed a car/motorcycle collision at very close range. I was one of 4 or 5 people who stopped to helpâeven though there wasnât much that we could do. Miraculously, the cyclistâs girlfriend/passenger wasnât injured very badly, but the cyclist had multiple compound fractures of both legs and he was screaming in pain. Luckily the ambulance crew arrived very quickly and they shot him up with⌠something⌠to ease his incredible pain.
The last one I saw was maybe 15 years ago on 35E in Minneapolis. I was back about a half mile and saw the dust fog ahead so knew something happened. The only thing anyone could do is put a rag over the guys head as he was laying in the middle of the road dead. Following too close and no helmet. As traffic normally does there, it stopped suddenly, the guy banged his head into the back of a mini van (dent and blood as evidence). And of course the one in back of him following too close too, for good measure ran right on top of the cycle. First time out on a spring day with a family waiting for him. Proximate cause of death-following too close and in the left lane. Contributing factor maybe no helmet but might have just broken his neck instead.
I donât let any guy in a cycle anywhere near me, nor do I allow anyone to tailgate me or I provide more distance ahead of me to compensate. The paperwork would be endless getting involved in an accident like that.
I guess the last one was when I was happily driving down I 35 in a rural area going about 70+ in the right lane. All of a sudden two guys (couldnât tell for sure) screamed by me in the left lane doing wheelies all the way. I expected to see some brains splattered on the pavement ahead but they were lucky. This is the same area where I have seen deer before and an unfortunate cayote that surprised me. Lethal for a guy on a bike on one wheel.
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I give cyclistsâboth those with motorized assistance and those who are peddlingâa very wide berth, andâlike youâI wonât allow tailgating to continue for more than maybe 1/2 mile. Itâs just so much easier to pull over in a safe place, and allow the BMW driver to zoom ahead in order to tailgate the person who was driving slowly in front of me.
Today, while driving in congested urban traffic, I observed a cyclist who had an apparent death wish. The traffic was movingâin fits and startsâat about 20 mph, and he cut in and out of both lanes and also rode the yellow line between lanes to a great extent in order to get past everyone else. He was lucky because he very narrowly missed being hit by several vehicles.
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Take just about any car from the EU or European market and crash it at 50 MPH instead of 40 MPH and itâll be the same result as the 0 star cars. If the average driving speed is 10 MPH slower in India than here, then driving in India with one of those is safer than in the US.
Another claim made with zero facts to back it up. And pointless. If all these cars were five star instead of zero star crash rating, fewer people would be injured and killed, right?
And I just checked-the death rate for India is more than TEN TIMES the rate for France, in deaths per vehicle per year.
The per capita death rate in India is only about 30% higher than the USA. At least 37% of fatalities involve a motorcycle. Countless others involve pedestrians and unbuckled passengers. In most frontal crashes itâs almost pointless to improve the safety of a vehicle if seat belts wonât be worn.
There were 151,113 reported deaths due to road accidents in India in 2019. 25,858 were pedestrian deaths. 37% motorcycle would be 55,911 motorcycle deaths. That leaves 69,344 deaths in vehicles.
Source: Number of pedestrian deaths on Indian roads down in 2020: Nitin Gadkari | HT Auto
Only 1 in 4 people in India use seat belts in their cars. Source: Time to buckle up: the state of seat belt use in India - The Hindu
In the USA seat belt users have 1/5th of the fatality rate as unbuckled passengers, since the roughly 10% of unbelted passengers account for half of the fatalities. If 90% of vehicle passengers in India were belted, their vehicle fatality rate would drop to 26,004 if I did the math correctly. That would be LESS than the USA despite the much larger population that India has. On average driving in a car with a seat belt in India is actually safer than the USA! Of course fewer people in India have cars, and some of that lower fatality rate would have to do with the people who do have cars probably driving shorter distances than in the US. India would still have a very high fatality rate if the motorcycle and pedestrian fatalities were added back in.
I agree with you and think motorcycles should be banned from public roads.
This is a case of correct figures taken out of context. India has a population of 1,380 million. The US has 333 million or a ratio of 4.14 to one.
India has 296 million operating vehicles while the US has 284 million. Nearly 1:1 or a per population ratio of 4 to 1 more cars per capita in the US than India
151,113 Indian traffic deaths vs 42,915 (2021) or a ratio of 3.52 times the US. So, with the same number of vehicles on operation, India has 3.52 times more traffic fatalities. I can find no data on deaths per miles driven in India
Their per capita data is an irrelevant piece of data as there are 4 times more people per car in India than in the US ⌠meaning less people are exposed to potential vehicular fatalities.
That sentence makes no sense. A motorcycle is a vehicle. Than means the total vehicle deaths would be 125,255, not 69,344.
Bottom line, the vehicular fatalities in India are 3.5 times greater per vehicle than the US. And NONE of the Indian vehicles will pass US crash and safety standards.
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