For passengers in front seat of vehicles, govt proposes mandatory airbags

New Delhi, Dec 30: The government has proposed to make it mandatory for an airbag to be provided for passengers in the front seat next to the driver.

A draft notification by the Ministry of Road Transport said that the proposed timelines for the implementation are from April 2021 for the new models and June 2021 for the existing models.

"Comments/ suggestions are solicited from all stakeholders at the following email address: comments-morth@gov.in with in 30 days from the date of notification," the ministry said.

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This would however lead to an increase in price and vehicle manufactures should absorb the major hike in cost to prevent impact on sales, the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) said.

FADA President Vinkesh Gulati said in a statement, FADA welcomes MoRTH's intention for mandating dual front airbags. This is a much needed safety norm which India should adopt and be at par with global standards.

"We hope OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) absorb the major cost of input due to the second airbag as it will impact the sales in the short-term. It will be bad for the industry, which is able to show growth on MoM (month-on-month) basis, but still lags in YoY (year-on-year) basis after Covid-19 hit us hard," he also said.