'If everyone would behave...': Mercedes India's CEO on reducing road accidents

Mercedes-Benz India's managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) Martin Schwenk has said there is a need to follow road safety rules and strict implementation of traffic rules to bring down fatalities due to accidents in India.

"If everyone would behave as per the regulation, we would already have a significant reduction in road fatalities, and that's for a two-wheeler, three-wheeler and four-wheeler," Schwenk told news agency PTI in an interview on Thursday.

Mercedes has started an investigation into the death of former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry. Schwenk said that Mistry's unfortunate demise has brought back "road safety on the agenda in a different way".

Cyrus Mistry was killed in an accident in Maharashtra's Palghar district on September 4. He was sitting in the backseat of a Mercedes car and was not wearing a seatbelt.

Speaking further on Mistry's death, Martin Schwenk told PTI on Thursday that he was very confident about the quality of Mercedes' products and the German luxury car maker fully cooperated with the police."

The Mercedes India MD and CEO added that a global specialised product liability team has been involved in the investigation of the September 4 accident in Palghar and a final report is awaited.

On being asked about the safety of Mercedes' vehicles, Martin Schwenk said the company excelled not only on the product side, but also engaged a lot in creating the most safest vehicle.

“We are at the forefront on safety on vehicles,” Schwenk said.

"We are known for having superior safety standards and all of our cars for example, all of them have at least six airbags, some of them seven, nine and the Maybach has 13 airbags... we have all five star tested (for crash) vehicles," he added.

(With PTI inputs)