I’m sorry, you were saying...

You have obviously never been to, let alone see a documentary on India.

Mom’s side is from Hyderabad - grandfather was a supreme court justice, my uncle is a businessman-turned-Member of Parliament - they’ve basically been 1%ers for a long time. My great grandfather had a Packard, my mom’s first car was an HM Ambassador (rebadged Morris Oxford) - currently my extended family lives there…

Though you have half a point, they are also competing with a large fleet of really old dieselly, heavy lorries. A crash with one of those would look way worse than any of these videos. It wouldn’t kill these car makes to throw some reinforcing bars in the doors and crumple zones, and maybe add an airbag or two. There…

Really?

My family is from India - I’ve travelled there plenty and driven there too. I just want to crack a joke that these cars will never be going fast enough to be in any real danger - the only places where you’d even get up to such speeds are places where there’s nothing to hit.

Engineering is a science of compromise. You use a given set of resources to achieve a specific goal. Yes, these cars could have been way better engineered. But that engineering effort is not free, and so if they were better engineered, the cost of the vehicle would go up. These are a perfect example of what happens…

Dodging?! You do realise we’re talking about India? There’s no room to dodge. Stop applying your standards to these people, they don’t share them. Helmets or any safety gear for that matter are not a concern for people that fit their entire family on these bikes. Apply similar circumstances for both the car and bike…

I read an article where Gillette was making razors for india and were finding ways to understand their needs.

You are absolutely correct. Everything is relative. These cars are HORRIBLE in relation to the alternatives here in the western world but, as you rightly mentioned, they are much better than the realistic alternatives in those parts of the world. I’ve lived in those countries. I know what the average family actually…

There is another factor at play here. The average Indian consumer is price conscious. Actually price obsessed. Fuel economy is the paramount concern. After that, bling. Those cheap and unsafe cars are decked out with all kinds of fancy interior options. The chassis could be made of cheesepaper and the consumers…

Good reply, I was thinking the same thing. Keeping them off of Tuk-tuks, where the driver IS the bumper, is also a good thing.

To be fair, the dad is the one steering the bike, and having a face shield does keep the small pebbles and bugs that invariably hit you in the face from crashing. So it is probably most important for the person in control of the bike to have the face shield. But the guys who don’t have a face shield and are still the…

My favorite is the one where the dad (driver) has a helmet on and his whole family had nothing.

Trust me, it is very sound logic. As an Indian working in the auto industry in India (R&D), i absolutely agree with Prismatist. There’s no way a a two wheeler is safer than a car, especially give everyones’ kamikaze driving style. This is a 60kmph frontal offset impact test, i’m guessing. You would be dead on the…

Practical answer: practice. In many cases, the father of the family drives the motorcycle all day as a taxi, so he has a lot of practice. On top of that, the family grows over time, so he can “level up” as it were. When I say “he,” I mean it. In the eight days I was in Haiti I never saw a single woman riding a…

Unfortunately, people who have never seen real poverty aren’t very good at imagining a needs/wants scale so different from their own that safety becomes a luxury. The tragic truth is that for many people around the world, what we would consider basic safety is something they simply cannot afford.

No, seriously. In India it is extremely common to see entire families on motorcycles, 5, 6 or even 7 people on a single motorcycle. No Ringling Bors Circus experience required.

unless you work in Ringling Bros.

1. Start with a basic design.