Recently There has been a tremendous push towards vehicle safety in India and so should be , As manufacturers are taking full advantage of the Nation being in its developing stages and pushing forward . The demand for vehicles is on rise in the nation and would always be if the registered car life is not increased from a stipulated 15 for petrol and 10 years for diesel. But the point of the matter being the occupant safety , the current regime has taken it sternly to manufactures to provide the nation with safe cars as was also evident by the recent notification by the government to the auto manufacturers to provide 6 airbags as standard in all their cars.
The Incident
In a recent incident a bench of the Supreme court announced decisions involving safety of the passengers in case a OEM setup of airbags fails to perform as intended. The impetus of the matter lies in an incident that took place on 16th November 2017 while the Hyundai Creta 1.6VTVT SX+ was driving on the Delhi Panipat Highway and met an accident. In the act of accident the dual frontal Airbags of the car refused to work as intended and didn’t open, which meant the driver suffered severe injuries to the Chest , Head as well as the Dental injuries .
The car buyer offended by the diabolical performance of the car in case of a crash, filed a complaint based on the complaint filed the state commission issued a compensation of 2,00,000 for the injuries sustained , 50,000 for the cot of litigation as well as 50,000 for mental agony faced by the owner.
Proceedings
The bench of the Supreme Court, led by Justices Vineet Saran and Aniruddha Bose, said that the capacity of the car manufacturer should be considered a factor to compute such punitive damages. The bench said that the consumer is under the impression that the airbags of a vehicle will deploy automatically, as soon as the vehicle meets with an accident.
The top court of the country said that in general situations, the car manufacturer shies away from taking responsibility by countering that the speed of the vehicle and force of the impact of the accident is not high enough to trigger the sensors of the airbags for their deployment.
In such cases as the bench said it should be understood that the occupant is not an expert to calculate such theories. These statements were issued while hearing an appeal filed by Hyundai Motor India Limited against National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission’s (NCDRC) order
In addition to these compensations, the state commission also stipulated that as the vehicle of the appellant was not replaced. The applicant is liable to get an interest of about 7% per anum of the value of the vehicle from the date of the accident. Finding these stipulations Hyundai filed a stay against these compensation announced by the State commission.
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