Maruti Suzuki S-Presso, Hyundai Santro, and more: Five cars with lowest Global NCAP safety ratings
Each car under the Global NCAP (The Global New Car Assessment Programme) is rated on a 5-star scale. The assessment programme intends to check the durability and reliability of a car. The higher the rating means that safer the car is in case of an accident. The ratings are based on the Adult Occupant Protection and Child Occupant Protection scores resulting from the crash test. Thanks to the efforts by the organization and government's efforts, many carmakers in the country are now focusing on making safer vehicles for consumers. However, a reality-check proves that most cars, especially in the entry-level segment, put passenger safety on the backburner to cut down costs. Here are the five cars with lowest Global NCAP safety ratings awarded between 2019 and 2020.
Maruti Suzuki S-Presso - Zero rating
Maruti Suzuki S-Presso was assessed for the crash test at a speed of 64 km/h. Under Adult occupant category, it was found that drivers and passengers head is offered good protection but the neck and chest are not properly protected. Alongside, footwell area is also rated as unstable. Overall, the car gets zero-stars for adult occupant protection. The S-Presso gets a driver-side airbag as standard.
Datsun Redi-GO - One star
Under Adult occupant protection, the car offered adequate protection to the driver's and front passenger's head. The driver and front passenger‘s neck and chest were also fully protected. However, the driver’s chest area showed poor protection and passengers chest area was marginally protected. Alongside, footwell area is rated as unstable. Overall, the car gets one-star for adult occupant protection. Datsun Redi-Go comes with driver-side airbag as standard.
Hyundai Santro - Two stars
The Santro offers good protection to the driver's and front passenger's neck and head. However, the driver's chest receives weak protection while the same in case of the passenger was marginal. Along with that, the footwell area is also rated as unstable. Overall, the car gets two-stars for adult occupant protection. Hyundai Santro comes equipped with driver-side airbag as standard.
Maruti Suzuki WagonR - Two stars
The WagonR, according to Global NCAP crash test, offered good protection to the driver and passenger's head. It even offered good protection to the driver's neck but passenger's neck received only adequate protection. However, the hatchback offers weak protection to front occupants' chest and marginal protection to the knee. The body structure as well as the footwell area was rated as unstable. The model crash-tested was fitted with driver-side airbag only.
Hyundai Grand i10 Nios - Two stars
The Grand i10 NIOS received a two-star rating for both adult as well as child occupant protection. The hatchback offered good protection for driver's and front passenger's neck. However, the driver received weak chest protection while the same for the co-driver was rated as adequate. The knee and tibia protection offered by the car to front occupants was marginal and the body shell was rated unstable with not capable of withstanding further loadings. The variant tested by the organisation had dual front airbags, ABS, EBD, seat-belt pre-tensioners, etc. as standard.
