For this edition of the Carzone.ie Motoring Report, we asked our survey respondents a few questions relating to safety. First up is the car itself. Most mass-produced models sold in Europe today are submitted to Euro NCAP for safety and crash testing. Euro NCAP is a completely independent organisation, classed as an International Association under Belgian law. Each member pays an annual subscription and must fund the testing of at least one car model each year.
Car manufacturers can fund the testing of their own cars but Euro NCAP has total control. The manufacturer cannot influence the testing, assessment or publication of the results. Research papers show that the Euro NCAP tests have encouraged car makers to improve car safety above and beyond the minimum level required by the law and the testing procedure evolves to keep pace with development.
We wondered how aware Irish drivers were of the Euro NCAP ratings, and it’s as relevant to buyers of used cars as it is to new, as the testing has been carried out since the nineties. Despite that, only 59% of respondents had heard of the Euro NCAP rating and only 40.3% of those bought a car partly due to its safety score. However, a massive 80.4% of motorists said they consider the safety features of a car before choosing to buy. When asked which safety devices are particularly important, the majority of people (82.1%) included airbags in their list. Trailing those by some distance, at 59.5%, were anti-lock brakes and a stability and traction control system (at 56.7%). Given how new automatic braking and driver drowsiness detection systems are, it was a little surprising to find solid support for them at 41.2 and 22.9% respectively.
The latter systems in particular, and others, are still, sadly, often relegated to the options lists of new cars. That’s in a bid to keep the purchase price down and remain competitive of course, but buyers aren’t incentivised to pay more for safety options either, as legislation means these extras are subject to VAT and VRT. Interestingly, 58.9% of those surveyed were not aware of this and the vast majority indicated their displeasure at the situation.
Unfortunately, this applies to child seats too, meaning that parents on a budget may often end up with a seat that is less safe in a crash than a more expensive model. Some 40.2% of our respondents indicated that they have children under the age of 11. Over 70% of those have one to two child seats in their car at any time. Encouragingly, most appear to be educated in the weight-based ratings system for child seats, and an impressive 72.1% confirm they are aware of the new legislation relating to penalty points for the driver for an incorrectly fitted, or inappropriate, child seat.
Along the same lines, the majority of respondents (82.6%) said they know about the new legislation relating to texting while driving. However, the effectiveness of the law relating to using a mobile phone while driving is brought into question, as 53.4% of those surveyed admit to being in a car while the driver has either made a call or sent a text from a handheld phone. Rather more worryingly, a significant 91.5% of respondents say they’ve witnessed another driver making a call or sending a text from a hand-held phone while driving in the past six months. That’s despite 72.5% rating talking or texting on a handheld mobile phone while driving as incredibly dangerous.