The Indian government has made a strong commitment to ensure passenger safety, and by extension reduce casualties in the event of road accidents. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari announced on Thursday that all cars will mandatorily have three-point seat belts for all front-facing passengers.
"I have signed a file yesterday to make it mandatory for automakers to provide three-point seat belts for all the front facing passengers in a car," the road transport and highways minister said.
As per the current practice, only front seats and two seats at the back have three-point seat belts. That's the case with most cars plying on Indian roads. The centre seat only gets a two-point or lap seat belt, which you'd get in passenger planes.
Accidents, deaths in India
Gadkari also pointed out during the press conference that as many as 1.5 lakh people die every year in 5 lakh road accidents in the country. In a report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), India recorded 3,54,796 cases of road accidents during 2020 in which 1,33,201 people died and 3,35,201 were injured. As per the data, more than 60 percent of the accidents were due to overspending, accounting for 75,333 deaths and 2,09,736 were injured.
