The Centre this month notified tougher crash-safety rules that every new car sold in India will have to meet, phased in from October 2027 to 2032. They cover what happens to the people inside a car in frontal, side and rear crashes and what happens to a pedestrian that a car hits, among other tests.
These are the legal rules, the minimum safety threshold that a car must meet before it can be sold.
They are implemented alongside the government's voluntary programme, Bharat NCAP, which rates cars – in a scale of one to five stars – on safety parameters. Bharat NCAP 2.0, a tougher and broader set of crash-tests, is also set to come into effect from October 2027.
Taken together, the legal requirements and Bharat NCAP 2.0 are aimed at improving road safety. The issue is of particular concern to India. Data by the road transport ministry shows that 172,890 people died in 480,583 road accidents in the country in 2023. Two-wheeler riders made up 44.8% of the dead and pedestrians 20.4%, which means about two in every three people killed in accidents were outside a car.
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The minimum requirement
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The minimum requirement
{{/usCountry}}Before a new car goes on sale in India, the carmaker has to show that it passes a set of crash tests and safety requirements laid down under the Central Motor Vehicles Rules. The process is called type approval, and it is mandatory.
Since October 2019, the two main crash tests, a frontal crash and a side impact, have been compulsory for all car models, as the road transport ministry told the Lok Sabha in 2017. In the frontal test, India follows a United Nations (UN) regulation in which the car is driven into a barrier at 56 km/h.
The rules notified this month raise that bar in stages. Several come with two deadlines, an earlier one for new models and a later one for models already on sale.
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The new rules
Frontal and side crashes. Revised standards for protecting occupants in offset frontal crashes, where only part of the car's front takes the impact, and in the side impacts apply to new models from October 2027 and to all models from October 2028. India's revised frontal standard follows the latest version of the UN regulation it is based on.
Seatbelts and airbags. This test focuses on restraint systems, which refer to seatbelts and airbags. A revised standard will apply to new models from October 2029 and to all models from October 2031.
Pedestrians. A revised standard for protecting pedestrians and other vulnerable road users applies to new models from October 2028. From October 2032, these tests must use the Flexible Pedestrian Leg Impactor (FlexPLI), a test tool that measures leg injuries a pedestrian would suffer when struck by a car's front.
Rear crashes and electric cars. From April 2029, all models must meet rear-impact rules covering the fuel system and the safety of electric powertrains. In a rear crash, the risks are a fuel leak in a petrol or diesel car and electric shock in an electric one.
Event data recorders. Event data recorders become compulsory from October 2029. It is a device that records vehicle data from just before and during a crash. It leaves out audio and video, location data and information about the driver.
India's legal frontal and rear-impact standards also include requirements on fuel leaks and on protection from electric shock after a crash. The draft of the new Bharat NCAP lists these among the checks its testers will verify after each of its crashes.
The voluntary safety tests: Bharat NCAP
Bharat NCAP, short for the Bharat New Car Assessment Programme, has rated cars since 2023 on a scale of one to five stars. Carmakers are not obliged to take part; the programme is voluntary.
Those that do put a model forward, and pay for both the test cars and the tests. The car tested is the base variant, which carries only the safety equipment that is standard across the range.
The rating's tests are tougher than the legal ones. In its frontal crash, the car is driven into the kind of barrier the UN regulation specifies, a block that crumples on impact, but at 64 km/h, eight notches faster than the legal test. This difference is important because the energy of a crash rises with the square of the speed, so a car hitting the barrier at 64 km/h carries about 30% more energy into it than one at 56 km/h.
Europe's car-rating programme, called Euro NCAP, used this 64 km/h test from 1997 until 2020, before switching to one in which the car and a moving barrier are driven into each other, each at 50 km/h.
From October next year, stricter standards and tests – called Bharat NCAP 2.0 – will come into effect. A draft for these norms said the star rating “goes beyond the minimum type approval requirements”, and that a car that just meets the legal rules “may or may not qualify for star rating”.
A car, in other words, can be legal to sell and still fall short on stars.
What changes in the rating
Today, each car rated under Bharat NCAP goes through three crashes: head-first at 64 km/h into the crumpling barrier, a moving barrier into its side at 50 km/h, and a slide sideways into a pole at 29 km/h. It gets two separate ratings, one for adults and one for children.
The revised programme raises the number of crash tests to five. The offset frontal crash stays at 64 km/h. The side test keeps its speed of 50 km/h, but the moving barrier that strikes the car will weigh 1,300 kg, up from 950 kg, so it carries more energy into the car. The pole will strike the side of the car at an angle, at 32 km/h instead of 29 km/h.
Two tests are new: the car's whole front driven into a rigid wall at 50 km/h, and a rigid barrier driven into its back at 50 km/h. The draft says the rear test should follow the procedure India's legal rules lay down for rear-impact crashes.
The draft also adds a dummy sized like a small adult woman and older child dummies, a test for whiplash, and checks on how easily rescuers can get people out after a crash.
Pedestrian protection, so far only a condition for the higher ratings, will be scored on points. Testers fire impactors, devices shaped like a human leg or head, at the front of the car. For instance, the leg at the bumper, an adult-sized head at the bonnet and windscreen, and a child-sized head at the bonnet.
The scoring mechanism also changes. The two ratings become one score out of 100. Crash protection has 55 points, protection for people outside the car has 20, driver-warning aids and accident avoidance 10 each, and safety after a crash, five.
To get five stars, 70 points will be needed from 2027, and this will go up to 80 from 2029.
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The voluntary rating
In December 2014, the government told the Lok Sabha that a planned Bharat New Vehicle Safety Assessment Programme would be voluntary from October 2017 and mandatory by October 2020.
Bharat NCAP, when it was launched in 2023, was voluntary, and the draft for its second version keeps it that way.
The government has argued that buyers will drive the change. Asked in the Lok Sabha in July 2022 whether the rating would make it harder for small-car makers to keep prices low, Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari said it would have no impact on the cost of small or big cars. If consumers bought higher-rated cars, he said, road deaths were likely to fall significantly.
Cost has been a sticking point before. In 2022, the government pushed back a proposed rule that would have required six airbags in every passenger car, citing global supply-chain constraints. The planned rule had faced resistance from some carmakers, which said it would raise prices and drive away buyers.
According to the draft for Bharat NCAP 2.0, curtain airbags, or similar side-head protection, will be a pre-condition to get any rating.
On revised legal rules, Ranjit Gadgil, programme director at Parisar and a member of the Road Safety Network, welcomed the new norms but said that "deadlines do matter". With the revised thresholds set to come into effect in phases, he said, "it will be important for the government to ensure that compliance with these regulations takes place in a timely manner".