Stringent implementation of traffic norms to bring down road accident fatalities, says Mercedes-Benz India MD & CEO

The death of former Tata Sons Chairman Cyrus Mistry in a road mishap involving a Mercedes-Benz vehicle earlier this month has brought road safety issues to the forefront again. Schwenk said there were adequate regulations in place but they needed to be enforced strictly.

“If everyone behaved as per the regulations, we would already have a significant reduction in road fatalities, and that’s for two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and four-wheelers,” he said.

Commenting on Mistry’s death, Schwenk said the incident has brought road safety back on the agenda in a different way.
“Historically, in India, we have around 1.5 lakh road fatalities in a year,” he said, adding that stringent enforcement of regulations can bring the mishaps significantly down.

It’s 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, “he said.
“Behave as per the codes and enforce the codes,” he added.

On a question of the safety of the company’s vehicles, Schwenk said: “Mercedes-Benz has excelled not only on the product side, but also engaged a lot in creating the safest vehicles, and I will still say, we are at the forefront of 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-star tested (for crash) vehicles, “he said.

Talking about Mistry’s accident, Schwenk said they are cooperating with the police.

“I’m very confident about the quality of our products. “We have fully cooperated with the police,” he said.

On Monday, a team of experts arrived in Thane from Hong Kong to investigate the mishap.

Schwenk said that the final report from the specialised product liability team is awaited.

The former Tata Sons chairman was killed in an accident involving a Merc on September 4 near Mumbai. Another of his co-passengers, Jahangir Pandole, was also killed in the mishap in the Palghar district of Maharashtra.
Two other occupants of the car, Anahita Pandole (55) and her husband, Darius Pandole (60), were injured. Anahita Pandole was at the wheel of the 2017 version of the 2017 GLC 220d 4MATIC when the accident occurred. The GLC 220d 4MATIC comes with seven airbags overall.

The driver had applied brakes five seconds before the accident, the car company informed Palghar police in its report.

Speeding and an “error of judgement” on the driver’s part were cited as the causes of the accident in preliminary investigation reports.