Shubham Sawarkar
According to transport minister Nitin Gadkari, the Indian government has ordered Amazon to stop selling devices that are designed to disable car seatbelt alarms due to potential safety risks.
The sale of the metal clips is legal, but since Indian tycoon Cyrus Mistry was killed in a car accident over the weekend, people are giving better attention to these devices and other issues related to road safety.
The fourth-largest car market in the world saw a resurgence of the debate over traffic safety after local media revealed that Mistry wasn’t using a seatbelt.
The metal clips, which are available on Amazon, are inserted in seatbelt slots to bypass the alarm that generally keeps beeping when seatbelts are not in use while a car is being driven, according to Gadkari, who detailed planned safety improvements in an interview.
“People buy clips from Amazon to evade wearing seatbelts. We have sent a notice to Amazon to stop (selling these),” said Gadkari.
According to Gadkari, in India in 2021, these car crashes caused roughly 150,000 deaths. India recorded a traffic fatality every four minutes, according to the World Bank‘s report from the previous year. He also stated that India plans to mandate seatbelt alarms for all seats, not only the drivers and front passengers.
On Wednesday, there were multiple ads for small metal clips that were advertised as being able to “eliminate” seatbelt alarms on various car models and variants on Amazon.in and the cost of the devices started at just ₹249 ($3.12, conversion as of Sept. 7th, 2022 at 9:46 pm IST).
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