India Launches NCAP

23 August 2023

The Indian Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has launched an indigenous star-rating system for crash testing cars under which vehicles will be assigned between one to five stars indicating their safety in a collision. Called the Bharat New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP), the rating system will be voluntary and will come into effect from 1 October 2023. This comes as India now enters the top league in vehicle safety performance.

The objective of the programme is to help consumers make an informed decision before purchasing a car, thereby spurring demand for safer cars. India sees nearly 1.5 lakh road fatalities in a year, accounting for 10% of deaths due to road crashes globally with only 1% of the world’s vehicles. According to a World Bank study, road crashes are estimated to cost the Indian economy between 5 to 7% of GDP a year.  

Global NCAP has simultaneously announced that it would be ending its 'Safer Cars for India' campaign which it launched 10 years ago.Instead, Global NCAP will share its experience  with Bharat NCAP. This will include SoPs related to the process of selecting vehicles and having the tests inspected and the best practices to engage with the media, along with guidelines for the usage of test results by manufacturers in advertisements.

Over the last 10 years, Global NCAP has conducted 62 crash tests under its 'Safer Cars for India' program. It has tested over 50 models so far.

News reports from The Hindu are available here

The Global New Car Assessment Programme (Global NCAP) is a major project of the Towards Zero Foundation