Just hours after the death of Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry due to a deadly car crash, prominent industrialist Anand Mahindra has taken a new pledge as several reports indicated that Mistry died because he did not wear a seatbelt while in the rear seat.
"I resolve to always wear my seat belt even when in the rear seat of the car. And I urge all of you to take that pledge too. We all owe it to our families," Anand Mahindra posted on his Twitter page.
Soon after Mistry's death, several reports stated that the airbags in the rear side were not activated as passengers were not wearing seatbelts.
I resolve to always wear my seat belt even when in the rear seat of the car. And I urge all of you to take that pledge too. We all owe it to our families. https://t.co/4jpeZtlsw0
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) September 5, 2022
Aged 54, Mistry died in a car accident on Sunday on his way to Mumbai from Gujarat's Udwada.
Cyrus Mistry was traveling in a Mercedes luxury car with Darius Pandole, a former independent director in the Tata Group, his wife Anahita Pandole and brother Jehangir Pandole.
According to reports, Anahita Pandole was driving the car at the time of the accident, and the vehicle could have hit a divider when she tried to overtake another vehicle at a very high speed.
Meanwhile, the accident news has grabbed international headlines. Bloomberg wrote a feature and claimed that Indian roads are dangerous to drive, and the condition of the roads in the nation could be the main reason behind the death of the billionaire.
"While India has built the world's second-biggest road network spanning 5.89 million kilometers (3.7 million miles), its highways are often marred by shoddy construction and poor maintenance," wrote Bloomberg in the report.
The report added: "Prior to the pandemic, there was one deadly road crash in India every four minutes, equal to 11 percent of all crash-related deaths globally even though the South Asian nation accounts for just 1 percent of the world's vehicles"
