Older, smaller cars putting younger drivers at risk

A US-based report has shown that teenagers and younger drivers are dying because their cars are older and less safe.

Carried out by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS – effectively the US equivalent to EuroNCAP) the report shows that compared to middle-aged drivers killed on the road during the same time span (2008-2012) teens and younger drivers were far more likely to be driving an older vehicle.

The ages of these cars are observed by the report to be as much as 11-years, while 82 per cent of teenage drivers killed in this period were driving a car of at least six year old. The researchers behind the report flagged up the fact that older, smaller cars were clearly less safe than newer, larger vehicles. In spite of all the improvements made in new vehicle safety, two things are keeping younger drivers in peril; on the one hand, they usually can simply not afford a newer car and are usually restricted by the high cost of insurance from driving a larger vehicle. Secondly, it can take a s long as thirty years for improvements in safety to trickle-down through the various vehicle ranges until they are widespread.

In the time period covered by the survey, it was shown that middle-aged drivers were more than twice as likely to be driving a car with life-caving electronic stability control (ESC), even though both groups showed a low overall percentage of such systems. Just seven per cent of older drivers' cars had it, compared to three per cent of teenage drivers.

By 2012, the IIHS pointed out, around 91 per cent of new cars were equipped with ESC as standard, but that still translated into just 15 per cent of all registered cars on the road having such driver assistance systems. In other words, it will be the middle of the next decade before ESC and other safety kit, such as side airbags, becomes commonplace on used-car forecourts.

When we recently approached Liberty Insurance for some tips on how to keep insurance costs down, a spokesperson trotted out some familiar advice: "The size of your engine, the make, model and cost of your car as well as modifications can have an impact of how cheap your car insurance will be. A 3 or 5 door hatchback with approximately a 1.0-litre capacity will be cheaper than a high power luxury car." Now it seems, it's precisely that sort of car, the small and small-engined hatchback, that is the very worst car for a younger driver to be learning in.

According to the Road Safety Authority, 43 people aged between 16 and 25 were killed on Irish roads in 2013 – the most for any specific age group. Half of all the drivers killed on our roads were in the same age bracket. Is that evidence that a fundamental rethink of the cars younger people are encouraged to buy and insure is needed?