Nitin Gadkari, India’s transport minister, announced on Tuesday that passengers sitting in the back of a car will now be fined if they are not wearing seatbelts. The remark came just two days after former TATA Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry died in a car accident near Mumbai. Mistry was sitting in the back of his Mercedes without a seatbelt when it crashed into a divider near Palgham.
‘It is already mandatory to wear a seatbelt in the back seat, but people do not comply. If the passengers in the back seat do not wear seat belts, a siren will sound. And if they don’t wear belts, there will be a fine,’ Gadkari said to NDTV before adding, ‘at any cost, lives must be saved’.
When asked about the fine’s amount, Gadkari stated that it will begin at around $13 and that its main goal will be to reduce the number of road accident fatalities by nearly 50%. He also stated that the government will work toward mandating the installation of airbags in the back seats of all vehicles, and as a result , they will be concentrating on increasing its production.
‘One airbag costs $1,000; six cost $6,000. The cost will be reduced as production increases. Cost is unimportant; people’s lives are When questioned about additional regulations’, he told NDTV. Gadkari also stated that India intends to make it mandatory for car manufacturers to include an alarm system, specifically for the rear seats, in addition to making it mandatory for passengers to wear them, failing which they will be fined.
‘Because of the Cyrus accident, we have decided… an alarm will continue to beep until those sitting in the rear seats put on their seat belts,’ Nitin Gadkari said. ‘There is already an alarm for those in the front seats, and it will now beep for rear seat belts as well,’ he added.
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