Tata Punch Owner Transports 700 Kg Load, Gets 18 Kmpl – Highly Unsafe

What is the point in driving one of the safest car of India, when you do not follow basic road safety protocols

When you look at the Tata Punch, what comes to your mind? A small car with decent ground clearance and excellent 5-star crash safety? You’re right. But can you ever imagine it as a commercial vehicle? You must be thinking that we’ve gone cuckoo. A Tata Punch owner has done just that.

No, he hasn’t converted Punch into a flatbed commercial truck. Instead, he has stuffed the entire volume of its interiors with crates of orange fruits. With a payload of 700kg, he transported that load 125 km away and claims to have got 18 kmpl mileage as well.

Tata Punch Transporting Goods

The Tata Punch owner who did this, has filled the cabin with wooden crates and on top, plastic crates. All of them are filled with oranges. In the boot, there are cardboard boxes filled with fruits and a bunch of Papayas stacked up as well. Plastic crates on top, don’t get any lids on them, and fruits inside them can pop out while driving on our roads.

These fruits can even roll down into the driver’s foot well and hinder brake or clutch application. Add to it, constant attention this payload needs, and this stunt is not only a hazard to the Punch driver, but to surrounding cars as well. Doing such stunts should be avoided at all costs.

There is a reason why it is a passenger car, and not a commercial vehicle. Driving a safe car is not enough, one has to practice safe driving as well. Driving within speed limit, maintaining tyre pressure, not going over the mentioned gross vehicle weight, not carrying goods instead of passengers, etc.

Use Commercial Vehicles To Transport Goods

Commercial vehicles are designed to carry out such tasks. Load bed is in the back and has its own perimeter. Passenger cabin is in the front and has its own perimeter as well. There is a pronounced gap between the passenger compartment and load bay. Load area and passenger compartment are always separated.

There is a reason why they are designed like that. In case of panic braking or a crash, momentum of the static payload is shifted towards the front, where driver and passenger are seated. If there are no barriers between occupants and payload, it is extremely dangerous from a safety perspective.

Even in cargo vans like Maruti Suzuki Eeco and Tata Winger, there are sturdy structures installed that will act as a barrier between occupants and payload. This is the reason why transport of goods should be confined to commercial vehicles instead of passenger vehicles. Simply put, passenger vehicles are not designed to transport goods in the cabin.