The
2nd International Passive Safety Seminar (iPASS-2018) was conducted at ICAT,
Manesar on December 13 and 14, 2018. The theme of the seminar was “Safe
Vehicle, Safe Life”. The seminar aimed to spread the awareness about vehicle
safety requirement and related technologies amongst the automotive industry,
government, OEMs and vehicle users.
The
event saw the presence of Chief Guest Neeti Sarkar (CEO & PD, NATRiP) and
guests of honour CV Raman (Executive Director-R&D, Maruti Suzuki), Velusamy
R (Sr. Vice President, Mahindra & Mahindra), Akira Nakamura (CEO, AISIN
Group), Mitsuhiro Nawashiro (MD, Toyoda Gosei), DineshTyagi (Director-ICAT) and
S.K.Kalia (CBO-ICAT Centre-2).
Neeti Sarkar remarked that "There are multiple
changes that are coming at the Indian automotive industry. There is a need for
design engineers to be cognizant of the requirements of the Indian conditions
and to design the vehicles accordingly, in order to meet the overall objective
of the safety on the Indian roads."
Dinesh
Tyagi, Director-ICAT, observed that "In India, as we loom on the cusp of
ever changing technologies, we must understand the challenges of today and turn
them into the opportunities of tomorrow. Safety is not about protecting
dummies, but about saving lives of people. We are now focusing on safety for
the right reasons. It is not only a regulatory issue, or a cost issue, or a
legal issue rather it is an issue about people saving people’s lives."
Around
150 delegates from across the country attended this seminar. Participation was
received from different OEMs like Maruti Suzuki, Mercedes Benz, BMW,
Volkswagen, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, JBM, Hyundai Motors etc. A
huge response from component industry was also witnessed with participation
from Toyoda Gosei, Joyson Safety, AISIN, Autoliv, Bharat Seats, Krishna Maruti,
Denso etc.
IPASS
2018 will help to promote the awareness about the need of passive safety
technologies required in a vehicle in order to keep the occupants and
pedestrian safe. The seminar focused on the accident data of India and
different type of injuries and fatalities that occur in such accidents every
day. Seminar also suggested some solutions to improve the crashworthiness of
the vehicle and techniques to reduce the injuries in road accidents. The need
of safety regulations in India was also a key point of discussion, in view of
current and future vehicles (EVs) requirements.