Saar: The industry will develop a new latch without the child lock function and that will be fitted at the dealer’s end to all cars sold as commercial vehicles.
We’ve all heard horror stories about how cabbies have misbehaved with women passengers across several cities in India. While the decision makes for safer transportation have taken several initiatives to make rides less scary, they have now come up with another initiative. This one says the from July 2019, all cabs and taxis in India will be without child locks.
At first, that might sound like a good solution to ensure that the cabby cannot restrict a passenger by just flicking the child lock on. But, on the contrary, you are also playing with the safety of children. However, the latter legitimate worry can be ignored since no child will travel alone in a cab. They will always be accompanied by an adult.
Another question that arises is that how will car manufacturers predict as which car will be sold as a private vehicle and which as a commercial one. The solution to that is all cars will, by default, come as they currently do, i.e. with the child locks installed. However, all manufacturers will have a newly develop latch that will come without the child lock and will be fitted at their dealer’s end. As soon as the dealer knows that a particular unit is being sold as a commercial vehicle, the standard latches will be replaced by the ones without the child locks. Credit where it is due, that’s quite a solution to curb the dangers associated with riding in the cabs alone.
And what about the cabs which are already on the road? Well, they will have to get those newly developed latches installed. And if they don’t, they won’t get an annual fitness certificate. To spread some awareness about child locks and how they lock on automatically, some cab aggregators have started pasting stickers in cabs to remind passengers to ensure that they disable locks before the trip starts. That is a temporary solution and not a very robust one. Doing away with the child locks completely will ensure that the problem of not able to open the door from the inside will be curbed from the roots.
Source: ET Auto
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