How the connections to the new airport work out still remain to be seen – the bus linkages are still haphazard at best, and the expensive Airport Metro seems to be an exercise in providing a high speed link as a showcase that misses out on an important segment – those who head to the airport for work. However, to give the devil its due, these can be worked on – and getting to and from the airport will hopefully not be the difficult trek it currently is.

An interesting side-effect of this is the way automobile sales are being impacted. Far from seeing a drop in sales due to the improved inter-modal public transport options, dealers are reporting an increase in the number of people buying something a few levels above what they ordinarily would, and ‘loaded’ better too. One big reason for this is that money and time saved on the local commute leads to a higher disposable income, as well as a better ‘mood.’ Also, viewed from the point of view of monthly EMIs, notching them up by a few thousand rupees makes potential customers move from bikes to small cars, hatchbacks to sedans, sedans to luxury vehicles, and all of them fitted out with the latest gadgets.

The typical outright saving per month on a sample work-to-home commute from, say, Noida to Gurgaon, or East Delhi to Nehru Place, Metro train versus car, works out to about 5,000-7,000 rupees a month in fuel and tolls alone – add to that the wear and tear, headaches, and time, as well as effort, wasted in traffic jams. If you’ve been stuck in a car on the BRT while half a dozen red and green buses whiz past you, loaded to the brim, you get the picture.

So here’s the interesting projection that some people in the trade are waving around – they anticipate that the NCR region alone will account for around 15,000-20,000 cars above the 25 lakh price bracket next year. That’s against a total of 10,000-12,000 thousand cars in this segment on a national level for 2009. And the main reason for this will be that there will be more disposable income, as well as time in hand to really enjoy driving – thanks to better public transport.

There may not be a great leap forward in the number of new vehicles sold in and around the NCR, but it appears that there is going to be a massive leap in the value proposition – and now it remains to be seen which luxury brands will be ready to capitalise on this surge.

As of now, the gates seem to be wide open, and while the German brands seem to have an edge, we can’t discount the rest of them either. It’ll be interesting days ahead. After all, if a luxury brand like Audi can sell 20,000 cars every month in China, with both BMW and Mercedes hot on its heels, then they can certainly sell a few thousand every month in India as well. But they’ll have to move fast – the others aren’t simply going to let things slip by.

Safety cushion or hazard?
	Road accident inquiry reports are seldom, if ever, made public in India. There are a variety of reasons for this – their status as legal evidence being one. Another is that the insurance companies still do not compile and share data on the subject. But, most of all, it’s simply that this data is often not available – leaving just anecdotal and second-hand information for people interested in the subject. Automobile manufacturers will seldom, if ever, share information on the failure of safety systems during accidents, unless forced to. After all, when did we last see any manufacturer provide data on accidents relating to their vehicles? This is more than just very sad, it’s outright murderous! But there isn’t much chance of getting any regulatory steps to force this information out of the manufacturers (which would be simple enough for them to get). Out there, in the forecourts and backyards of workshops, lies enough material to provide for multiple levels of awareness and improvement in road safety. But it just gets hidden away – never to be discussed or learnt from, while more and more new vehicles and drivers pour onto our roads. And many of these new vehicles and drivers are provided with state-of-the-art safety equipment onboard their brand new vehicles, without any idea of how this will impact matters when things go wrong. For example, a fairly severe road accident had caused a heavy traffic jam on one of the faster roads out of Delhi a few days ago – leading to a tail-back of over a few kilometres. Finally coming abreast of the accident, we stopped to find out more, and sensitivities ensured we kept our cameras aside as there were gory sights on display. In a multi-car collision, the vehicle most impacted was the largest one – an SUV, a modern luxury SUV, equipped with all the correct safety features. It had struck, or been struck, by other vehicles and rolled over. In fact, it looked like it had gone head over heels too, and then come to a halt almost on top of a smaller car. And it was also visible that all or many of the airbags inside had deployed. And this, because people inside were probably not wearing seatbelts, had caused bodily injury to the occupants – in the way that uncontrolled explosions would impact rag dolls and toss them around like chopped salad in a mixer. There were bits and pieces of flesh and limb scattered around inside this SUV, some more stuff stuck to the laminated safety glass, which had done its job of not shattering on impact, as well as some grey-red matter stuck to the by-now deflated airbags. It is pertinent to point out here that the ‘trial’ introduction of airbags in the US in the ‘70s had caused similar fatalities. And a simple fact emerged – in a majority of the fatalities caused by airbags, most had occurred when seatbelts were not worn. USA regulations for airbag deployment, incidentally, allow for the possibility that occupants will be un-belted. European regulations, on the other hand, assume that seatbelts will be on at the time of deployment. There are also very strict regulations in place worldwide on airbag maintenance and care, as well as service and replacement – along the lines of the very exacting specifications used for handling explosives.

At the same time, in cases where multiple collisions and rollovers take place in rapid succession, airbags that have already been deployed and deflated will likely cause more damage than expected. This is even more so in the case of luxury SUVs operated in India, which are increasingly used as fast street vehicles with high road clearance for bad patches of road. Multiple rollovers of SUVs are more likely to occur in India than in developed countries, and that’s not good news for those inside if airbags deploy.

Unfortunately, the ground reality is that there still seems to be some resistance to wearing seatbelts – especially by those who can get away with it. And this class of people, those with power as well as money, will also buy the latest automobiles fitted out with the most state-of-the-art safety systems, which require seatbelts to be fastened.

in order to work properly. And when they don’t wear those seatbelts, then there’s the rag doll in the salad mixer scenario.