Traffic Chief: We will be involved in Pride and Peugeot for the next 30 years

The head of the traffic police criticized the quality of domestic cars and the current state of the automotive industry, which is purely assembly work, and said that the police will not back down from their stance on the safety of domestically produced cars.

Regarding the ongoing problem of domestically produced cars for a long time, he said, "If the production of an unsafe car is stopped right now, we will be dealing with it in 20 to 30 years, just as we are still dealing with the Paykan," and the story of Pride and Peugeot will continue for another 30 years.

Kamal Hadianfar added: "The police are sensitively monitoring the safety of not only domestically produced vehicles, but also imported vehicles, and if a vehicle does not have the necessary safety features, it will definitely be prevented from being registered."

He said that he responded to some non-expert statements in this regard and believes that some of these statements about domestic cars are made out of ignorance and others out of personal interest.

The traffic police chief stated that we witness horrific accidents every day and added that almost every two or three days we have a fire or explosion in domestic cars, and we really cannot and do not want to broadcast images of these accidents in the media, but officials and automakers who are aware of the situation and know how many accidents and injuries occur daily should think about people's lives and property.

The traffic police chief added: "There were 107 vehicles in just one accident parking lot, the documentation of which we have provided to the parliament, and out of these 107 vehicles, all of which crashed from the front, meaning from the right angle, the airbags of 97 vehicles, meaning about 98 percent of the airbags, did not deploy."

He also added that some automakers claim that the reason the airbag does not deploy is because the driver has locked it, stating that "the driver's airbag definitely deploys and does not have a manual or selective mode, and in the cases I mentioned, even the driver's airbag did not deploy."

Referring to the stance of some officials and members of parliament on criticizing the quality of domestically produced cars or opposing the import of foreign-quality cars, Hadianfar said that these groups definitely have financial benefits from the production of domestic cars, and the police's emphasis on improving quality causes financial losses for them and their groups.

Every year, about 12,000 Iranians lose their lives in traffic accidents, and more than 300,000 people are injured or disabled as a result of accidents.

Source: Voice of America