Active and Passive Safety: An Overview on Establishing Safety Assessment Standards in India

Traffic injuries are an important public health issue. To prevent these injuries, safety systems in a vehicle are recognized as valuable tools. These safety systems are active before and during a crash event. Passive safety is one such safety tool which comprises of occupant restraint systems to prevent fatal injuries during an event of a crash. To improve the real life safety further, active safety systems plays an important role in mitigating the real world accidents. Moreover, effective integration of active and passive safety systems has a potential to further reduce car occupant fatalities. However, in the recent developments in India towards road safety, vehicle safety standards are oriented more towards passive safety. In the present work, road accidents data from India between 2005 and 2014 are studied, to estimate the major mode of accidents and factors influencing the fatal injuries. Technological and human factor interventions are derived from these accidents statistics. The data collected can be an important input in developing the active safety systems representing the real world scenario. The human errors and injury severities associated with above accidents, emphasize the need of both active and passive safety systems in a vehicle to avoid accidents and mitigate injuries. This paper signifies the need of a robust regulatory system combining both active and passive safety systems to reduce the proportion of road accidents and the fatalities.