Gold Standards for Child Safety
If you are reading this, you will agree that ensuring child safety in your vehicle is important in every drive. To ensure that safety is followed stringently, there are a number of international organizations as well as national or regional bodies that set standards and implement laws.
All these efforts have led to innovations and features that are also seen in Mahindra vehicles today. Let’s take a look at some of these features, standards and laws that will ensure that your child is always safe in the vehicle.
ISOFIX
ISOFIX is an international standard for attachment points used for fixing child restraint mechanisms directly to a car’s seats, using specially designed, universal connectors. Being universal in dimensions and hardware, all brands of child restraints comply with the ISOFIX standard.
Children need special restraints because a vehicle’s seatbelts are designed for an adult-sized human body. They are not suitable for children. ISOFIX provides an easy and secure option to attach an appropriate child restraint system (or a “child seat”) in your car. This standard is being widely adopted by car manufacturers to ensure child safety. While selecting a suitable child seat, look out for marks on the seat indicating where the ISOFIX latch attaches. Child seats are also available for vehicles without ISOFIX. These are designed to use the vehicle’s seatbelt to fix them in the car. However, if your car is equipped with ISOFIX, you should opt for child seats that utilize this mechanism as it is more secure and reliable.
NCAP
A New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) is a government car safety program that evaluates new automobile designs for performance against various safety parameters. Internationally, there are multiple testing agencies founded by different organizations and GNCAP (Global New Car Assessment Programme) is one of them. To get this much sought-after rating, cars go through a series of stringent safety & crash tests to assess the safety levels and get rated in stars.
The assessment of Child Occupant Protection covers three main aspects:
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The protection offered by the child restraint systems in frontal and side impact tests
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The vehicle’s ability to accommodate child restraints of various sizes, designs and features.
Quality of provisions for safe transport of children in the car.
One of the cars with the highest safety ratings in India is the Mahindra XUV300 which scored a 5-star rating for safety and a 4-star rating for child safety.
Indian laws on child safety
While your child’s safety is anyway a top priority, it’s important to know the rules and laws about child safety in the context of motor vehicles. In the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 2019, the insertion of Section 194B makes it mandatory for every child in a vehicle to be secured by a child-restraint system or a safety belt. Moreover, the new section also holds the person driving the vehicle accountable for not seating children in a safe manner and could attract a hefty fine.
If you are wondering which child seats are the best for your kid and why, our #ChildSafetyOnTheGo series has all the details for you. Read the first blog to learn more on how to keep your child comfortable and safe in your vehicle.