Stringent implementation of traffic norms can reduce road accidents in India: Mercedes Benz CEO

While Mercedes Benz India is busy investigating the accident that took the life of the former chairman of Tata Motors, Cyrus Mistry, the carmaker wants stricter implementation of traffic rules to reduce the number of fatalities from road accidents in India.

“If everyone would behave as per the regulation, we would already have a significant reduction in road fatalities, and that's for a two-wheeler, three-wheeler and four-wheeler," said Martin Schwenk, Managing Director and CEO of Mercedes Benz Martin Schwenk said to PTI here on the sidelines of SIAM annual session.

Cyrus Mistry was in the backseat of the 2107 Mercedes Benz GLC SUV that crashed in Palghar a couple of weeks ago. Late Mistry was not wearing a seat belt, and that sparked a huge debate in the nation. To this, the Ministry of Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari reacted by passing a new rule that makes wearing safety belts in the second row compulsory.

"Mercedes Benz has excelled not only on the product side but also engaged a lot in creating the safest vehicle and I will still say, we are at the forefront on safety on vehicles. We are known for having superior safety standards and all of our cars for example, all of them have at least six airbags, some of them seven, nine and the Maybach has 13 airbags... we have all five stars tested (for crash) vehicles," said Schwenk.

He further added how in India historically around 1.5 lakh fatalities in a year on the roads.” The gap is not so much in the regulation part," he said,. "Its in the behavioural and in the enforcement of existing regulations, which both could significantly reduce the road fatalities in all modes of transportation to get down from the 1.5 lakh annual deaths on the Indian roads."

I'm very confident about the quality of our products, we have fully cooperated with the police." Schwenk added. After Cyrus Mistry’s mistimed death due to the accident, a globalised specialised product liability team has been involved in the investigation and the final report of that investigation is still awaited.