11 ms·
One of the reasons why the Renault Kwid is $4000 is because, well, it uses cheap materials, and with that comes a very bad safety rating. This is enabled by Ind
by smcg 9y ago
One of the reasons why the Renault Kwid is $4000 is because, well, it uses cheap materials, and with that comes a very bad safety rating. This is enabled by India's nearly non-existent car safety regulations. Everything has a "price".
- Kluny 9y agoA car is a tool that a poor family can use to multiply their effectiveness and pull themselves out of poverty. Lots of people are willing to gamble their safety for the chance. edit: plus, it can hardly be worse than 6 children in a moped... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/overloaded-vehicles-gallery-1.1397465?pmSlide=1.1397459 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/overloaded-vehicles-gallery-...
- pwython 9y agoFor those in that area that can't afford a safe, reliable car, perhaps it's a step up from a motorbike though. Not to mention, it allows for more passengers in the death trap.
- Retric 9y agoDepends on top speed. If you moped never breaks 25mph then a car doing 50mph could easily be less safe. It's also much more dangerous to people around you.
- NoPiece 9y agoThe most reliable mopeds still crash and get hit. Fatalities per mile are greater bicycles and motorcycles than cars.
- gorkonsine 9y agoWhere? If you're in a place where everyone drives a moped or bicycle and cars are rare, then mopeds are a lot safer. Stick the moped in traffic surrounded by clueless SUV drivers and now the moped is a death-trap. Go to a place where everyone rides a bicycle and there's no cars and I guarantee the fatality-per-mile rate is ridiculously low. See downtown Copenhagen for example.
- Retric 9y agoDepends if you limit it to moped - moped collision then the numbers are different. But a car - moped collision is arguably a car fatality not a moped fatality. That said walking is very dangerous per mile, but cars get a lot more miles on them.
- apendleton 9y agoFatalities per mile is a tricky metric for comparing across modes, though. At least in the US, people getting cars often comes with adopting a car-centric lifestyle: you move to the suburbs, your commute and trips to the grocery store get significantly longer, etc. This is why fatalities per mile are higher on a bike, but fatalities per trip are actually slightly lower than a car: people with cars take longer trips.
- mastazi 9y ago> This is why fatalities per mile are higher on a bike, but fatalities per trip are actually slightly lower than a car: people with cars take longer trips. Maybe I'm just dense but how does that invalidate parent's point? Based on what you are saying (difference in trip length), it appears that fatalities per mile actually does a better job (than fatalities per trip) at representing the relative safety of different classes of vehicles...
- lmm 9y agoThe question most people care about is something like "would buying a car make me more or less likely to die". If buying a car means you're safer per-mile but leads you to take longer trips, then not buying a car is safer.
- agumonkey 9y agoI'd be very curious about the stats. Above 35-40 you quickly notice a change in momentum. At least a car might have better brakes and stability.
- tinus_hn 9y agoIn the Netherlands you are about 4 times more likely to be seriously injured or killed due to an accident by distance driven on a moped compared to in a car. This is due to the safety features of cars and to a lesser extent the fact that young people, who end up in a lot of accidents are allowed to ride a moped but not a car.
- Retric 9y agoHow many of those collisions are with cars? Because cars kill a lot of pedestrians, but those count more vs people walking than vs people driving due to the relative distances involved.
- tux1968 9y agoAlthough if the alternative is to be riding a moped, and in many cases without a helmet, this still represents a step forward in safety.
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoAll moped drivers in cities wear helmets, only the passengers don't
- johnmaguire2013 9y agoWhat? This definitely is not true in the United States. In Michigan, both the driver and passenger are required to wear a helmet on a motorcycle unless they have special medical insurance -- as far as I know, mopeds do not have the same requirement and it is very evident if you spend any time in our cities. Having a slower vehicle doesn't always mean safer, despite contrary belief -- I can get out of the way of a car merging into my lane far easier on my motorcycle than any moped rider can.
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoIn India
- weberc2 9y agoFor the driver and passengers; not necessarily for pedestrians, cyclists, or mopedestrians/motorcyclists.
- mschuster91 9y ago> One of the reasons why the Renault Kwid is $4000 is because, well, it uses cheap materials, and with that comes a very bad safety rating. Still, better safety rating than a scooter, and that's the most important part (next to way better emission control, as scooters generally use nasty 2-stroke engines).
- smcg 9y agoA valid point. I honestly don't know what is best for India, but the Kwid is a step forward in innovation, at least. It would have been nice if the article covered these points, like some of the others I've read on the Kwid.
- weeksie 9y agoBetter safety for the driver of the car, not the poor bastard on a scooter that gets mowed down ;)
- mschuster91 9y agoIf you're on a scooter you get mowed down regardless if the colliding party is a scooter, a car or a truck. And even if the colliding party is a scooter, there's still all the traffic behind it. So it doesn't matter. That is a job for the government to actually hire and train cops to enforce traffic rules (red lights, DUI, right-of-way)...
- gorkonsine 9y agoCars are generally faster than scooters. If everyone else is driving a scooter too, you're much less likely to get hurt in a crash, or to have a crash, because the energies are much lower and the speeds are much lower (low speeds make it easier to avoid crashes). Also, momentum is a real thing. Getting hit by a scooter at 10mph isn't nearly as bad as getting hit by a truck at 10mph.
- chrisseaton 9y ago> Still, better safety rating than a scooter Is it? I mean maybe it is, I don't know, but I'm guessing you don't really know either. I can imagine that maybe a scooter could be safer than a very bad car. You can get crushed in a car, cars go faster, you've got less situational awareness. I'm not sure this is one of those things that is just obviously true.
- weeksie 9y agoAhhh safety, driving, and the developing world. Ugh. I haven't tested the hypothesis but I think the switch from mopeds to cars has resulted in a huge number of traffic fatalities. This was super evident in Thailand as it's quite clear that non tuk-tuk/rickshaw or motorcycle transport is a very new thing. There's an obliviousness to the fact that they're driving thousands of pounds of steel and nobody else on the road is protected in the same way. India's drivers are actually pretty awesome, but they've had cars for a lot longer. Still. More people driving and perhaps being the first in their families to actually own a car means bad news. Not that I see any good solution other than waiting a few generations, widespread driver's ed is probably cost prohibitive. Still. Ugh.
- thrownblown 9y agothe robots will be doing all the driving by then
- 0x006A 9y agodid anyone let a robot try its luck on an urban street in india yet? looking forward to see how that works out... for sure it will need another mode that is more agressive to not just get stuck.
- CamperBob2 9y agoHmm. If the pedestrians know they're not engaged in a dominance game with an aggressive human driver, they might actually be more likely to get out of the way.
- skinnymuch 9y agoWhy? We don't know what'll happen, but if you know an automated car will stop for you even if you're in the wrong, then why not go for it if you're already in an environment and culture with aggressive pedestrians and drivers.
- 9y ago
- jriot 9y agoAs long as the consumer is aware of the lack of safety there is no reason why it can't be sold.
- harigov 9y agoTraffic speed in cities is usually so bad that you will rarely if ever meet with a major accident using these cars. That doesn't mean that safety isn't important. It's just that we are not talking about 70mph American freeway speeds.
- danans 9y agoTraffic speed is not constrained on the brand new inter-city freeways being built in India, though. I had that experience as a passenger not too long ago, and the high speeds + Indian driving habits were ... exciting.
- danans 9y agoAnd by exciting, I don't mean fun or pleasant.
- justin66 9y agoI wouldn't want to get in a partial-overlap head-on collision in one of these things, at even a third of the speed you're talking about.
- overcast 9y agoI spent a month traveling ALL of India last year. In the immediate cities sure. But go outside to the "highways", and it's like Mad Max out there. Seriously. Everyone is hauling ass on no lane roads, passing each other constantly into oncoming traffic. Also NO ONE wears seat belts. I had to demand them in cars that were picking me up. Usually they were either disconnected, or hiding away never used. It's terrifying.
- prawn 9y agoAlmost every month, I think about William Gibson's talk of cardboard car bodies in The Peripheral, and wait to see it eventuate. If the cars drive themselves and we are then less rushed as we can entertain/work during a drive, will lower speeds be accepted? And if they're safer as a result of the self-driving and lower speed, could a cheaper shell work? And even more so if price is a primary consideration and you don't own the car? In Australia, a scrape on your car feels like the beginning of the end. In Europe, where people cram into tiny parks out of necessity, bumps and scrapes seem more like a fact of life.
- ido 9y agoIt is extremely variable in Europe - in Italy most of the cars seem scraped where as in Germany it's more like how you make Australia sound.
- nopinsight 9y agoIt is still safer than mopeds, the prevalent alternative for most people there. Also, if we think of other road users, less safe cars might encourage the driver to drive more carefully and less likely to endanger others. Edit: I mean that in the context of India where cars, mopeds, bikes, tuk-tuks, and pedestrains intermingle. See the image in the article.
- JamesMcMinn 9y ago> Also, if we think of other road users, less safe cars might encourage the driver to drive more carefully and less likely to endanger others. I really hope you intended this as satire. Over a million people die each year in road traffic accidents because people aren't perfect and have accidents. Feeling safe in a car has very little to do with how safe the car itself it, and more to do with how "normal" travelling in a car feels.
- nopinsight 9y agoIf the driver risk compensates, as suggested in research below, the risk to people in the car stays the same by having fewer accidents in less safe cars but the risks to other road users also decrease. Also, the driving and road culture in most lower income developing countries are very different from those in developed countries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system#Effectiveness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system#Eff... "Anti-lock brakes are the subject of some experiments centred around risk compensation theory, which asserts that drivers adapt to the safety benefit of ABS by driving more aggressively. In a Munich study, half a fleet of taxicabs was equipped with anti-lock brakes, while the other half had conventional brake systems. The crash rate was substantially the same for both types of cab, and Wilde concludes this was due to drivers of ABS-equipped cabs taking more risks, assuming that ABS would take care of them, while the non-ABS drivers drove more carefully since ABS would not be there to help in case of a dangerous situation.[26]"
- lucaspiller 9y agoUnfortunately this is no different to any other car sold at the same price point in India. There isn't anything special about this price (other than clickbait for Westerners) - other cars like the Suzuki Alto which also don't come with airbags as standard cost the same.
- princekolt 9y agoThe disruption of the Model 3 (or any Tesla car so far) has never been about being cheap, but just more appealing than the crappy electric cars from before while being, on average, marginally cheaper when you consider the costs of fuel+maintenance. For this only reason the entire premise of this article is already crap. This whole article sounds a lot like a Koch Bros funded piece (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/koch-electric-vehicles_us_56c4d63ce4b0b40245c8cbf6 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/koch-electric-vehicles_u...).
- puranjay 9y agoA car, howsoever unsafe, is still an upgrade from a 2-wheeler. Given that this car is targeting people who own 2-wheelers and want to upgrade, I'd still say it is a safer option
- jbmorgado 9y agoNot for pedestrians, that's the point.
- ciconia 9y agoBear in mind that driving conditions in India are very different than those in the western world. From what I've seen when I was there on most roads cars go at 50-60 kph (30-40 mph).