Mahindra Scorpio accident with one youth dead: Company explains why airbags didn’t open

Recently, reports of a case that had been registered against Mahindra & Mahindra Chairman Anand Mahindra and 12 other employees of the company in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh surfaced on the internet. The case was filed by a customer Rajesh Mishra, who alleged that the Mahindra Scorpio he had purchased for his son was missing airbags. On January 14, 2022, Apoorv, Rajesh Mishra’s son, was returning from Lucknow when he met with an accident and died because the airbags in the SUV didn’t deploy. Mishra alleged that the Scorpio car had no airbags installed.
Following the unfortunate incident, Mishra moved to a local court seeking a probe into the matter that resulted in the demise of his son. Almost two years after the incident, an FIR has been registered against Anand Mahindra and 12 others on the charges of ‘false assurances’ provided on the safety of the SUV. As per the filed complaint, Mishra, trusting the advertisements and social media posts shared by the Mahindra Chairman about the safety of the SUV, purchased the car and gifted it to his only son, Apoorv.

The youngster, at the time of the incident, was headed to Kanpur along with two other friends. The FIR says that all of them were wearing their seat belts when the car crashed into a divider before rolling over multiple times. Mishra has alleged that M&M cheated him by selling him a car without airbags and that their negligence led to his son’s death.
The Scorpio airbag scandal has sparked safety debates on social media. Many users are questioning the safety standards of the cars and the accountability of local automakers. We reached out to the manufacturer seeking a comment on the matter and the company’s spokesperson said, “Mahindra & Mahindra would like to clarify with respect to an FIR that was filed on September 23, 2023. The case is over 18 months old, and the said incident happened in January 2022,”
“It was alleged that the vehicle did not have airbags. We would hence like to categorically reconfirm that the Scorpio S9 variant manufactured in 2020 did have airbags. We have investigated and there was no malfunction of the airbags. It was a rollover case which would not deploy the frontal airbags.”
“A detailed technical investigation was completed by our teams in October 2022. The matter is currently sub judice and we are committed to cooperating with the authorities for any further investigation that is required. We completely empathise with the family and offer our deepest condolences to them in their grief,” the spokesperson added.
What happens with the airbags in case of rollovers
Going by the manufacturer’s statement, it is true that in case of rollovers, front airbags do not deploy. For instance, if a car has a frontal impact, the car sensors detect it promptly and the frontal airbags are deployed. Carmakers configure the sensors to detect both the speed and direction of the collison. However, in case of flipping and rollovers, the front airbags may not inflate as the sensors won’t be able to detect rollover accidents.
That said, if the SUV had curtain/side airbags, they would’ve inflated during the collision and could’ve prevented the unfortunate incident.