Car safety cannot take a back seat

When an agency called Global New Car Assessment Programme (Global NCAP) failed two Indian cars for safety issues, it caused quite a bit of excitement here, particularly among the automakers.

What you need to know is that the Society of India Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) claims the cars meet Indian safety laws. Current laws in one country notwithstanding, human life shouldn't be cheap anywhere. And you want to know that Global NCAP is a UK registered charity that supports the development of crash test programmes for markets where vehicle growth is strong but independent consumer information on crash-worthiness is not readily available (paraphrased from their mission statement). They get funding from two other consumer-oriented organisations, the FIA Foundation (http://www.fiafoundation.org/) and International Consumer Research and Testing Ltd (http://www.international-testing.org/).

Concerns over the automotive safety are not new and not restricted to India. Recall the recent news on Honda's exploding air bags, Tata Nano's fires, Toyota's famous settlement in the United States for embedded software issues that resulted in crashes and injuries and GM's mega recall of 8.4 million vehicles in a single day in June over faulty ignition switches that may have played a role in several crashes.

Are you concerned about automotive safety as electronics engineers and embedded software designers? Are you involved in systems design for cars?

We've been highlighting the need for safety for some time and I have picked these tutorials for you. Don't miss them! Don't let safety take a back seat.

Get your feet wet with this interview, Verifying, sharing automotive test results key to safety, then click on the tutorials below.

Automotive Safety Tutorials