Safety features not at a premium

CLEARLY, IF you drive home tonight and have a major accident on the way, you are going to think that automotive safety technology is the most important thing in the world. If you’re driving a car built in the last decade, you now stand a better chance than ever before of surviving even a serious accident – and even walking away without any significant injury.

Thanks to the work done by institutions such as the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) and the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, cars have become ever safer: better at protecting their occupants, other drivers and pedestrians. At the Geneva motor show this past month, Volvo even showed a new V40 that has a bonnet-mounted external airbag to protect the heads of any unfortunate pedestrians you bump into.

But take away the in extremis situation. Look more at the everyday. Of precisely what benefit to you, the car-buying consumer, is safety?

There is certainly no financial benefit: only penalties and compromises. Safety equipment adds weight, which increases fuel consumption and wear and tear, and the cost of developing and installing it increases the price of every car sold.

Worse again, you don’t even get any credit from your insurer if you buy a safer car, or specify optional extra safety equipment on your new car.

According to Paul Moloney of Axa Insurance: “The car safety features and Euro NCAP ratings are already taken into account in the car ratings we use to calculate premiums, as is the age of the car. As for including extra safety features, this is not something we see very much of . . . People rarely, if ever, mention safety enhancements when insuring. Another factor is: who made the enhancements, were they approved and by whom? What standards do they meet?”

However, Paul Fay, the manager of the Automotive Safety Office for Ford in Europe, a man who works closely with the likes of Euro NCAP, reckons that insurers are going to have to start paying a good deal more heed to the safety technology in cars.

“There is an opportunity for insurance companies to help drivers to pick safer cars and be rewarded for that with lower premiums,” he says. “That doesn’t happen as a general rule in Europe, at least not to the extent it could. Certainly, as car technology increases it’s getting harder and harder for the insurance companies to understand the benefits that can accrue from these new driver safety or assistance systems. They need to fully understand how they operate and the benefits given to drivers in terms of avoiding crashes or surviving crashes.

“The majority of the systems being introduced on cars today, using advanced sensors such as radar or camera based systems, are there to support the driver and help them avoid a risky situation – or give them more information or support once they’ve reached a critical situation. The exception to that is systems such as stability control which [makes] calculations and [takes] actions that a driver simply wouldn’t be capable of and helps them maintain control. In instances like that, you have to let the car do what it can do.”

But for all the new technology being introduced, it is still the humble seatbelt that has the biggest contribution to make to keeping us safe on the road.

“It’s a sad fact that many of the people killed and injured in cars aren’t wearing one,” says Fay. “There’s a huge benefit to be gained simply by getting people to wear seatbelts all the time.

“In countries like Ireland and the UK, the average belt-wearing rate is in the high 90 percent, or more. The problem comes when you look at the crash population: it’s much lower. It varies from country to country, but something like 50 per cent of people killed in car crashes weren’t wearing their seatbelts.”

All of which was brought into focus recently by a simple typo on a Skoda press handout. It told us that the Skoda Octavia has a seatbelt warning system on the passenger seat: it doesn’t. Skoda Ireland’s Raymond Leddy offered us a perfectly reasonable explanation:

“Sadly, it’s not available. If it was available, even as an option, rest assured that it would be specced on the car. Something to bear in mind is that all of the Octavia’s competitors are very new, whereas the Octavia was originally introduced back in 2004. It’s a car from a different era, really, so the comparison with newer vehicles is unfair . . . we have an all-new Octavia coming in 2013, and I expect it will have all of the latest safety equipment and systems.”

The spec quoted on Skoda’s website is correct and if you go to the Euro NCAP website and examine the safety ratings, you will find that the Octavia has a 4-star rating (a respectable figure back in 2004), whereas its more youthful competition are all five-star holders.

The next important step in seatbelt wearing is rear-belt warnings. Several car makers already fit warning lights that tell you when a rear-seat occupant isn’t wearing their belt, but an audible warning would be useful, especially for harassed parents trying to ensure that their kids are securely belted in. Tomas Broberg, one of Volvo’s safety experts told us that “Volvo provides a notification to the driver [on] the dashboard to confirm on start up which rear seat belt is used.

“However, as there is always a risk that a child will unfasten their belt once the car is moving, there is an audible warning should a rear seat belt be undone in transit. Volvo first introduced this feature in 2004 with the S40. Since then, Euro NCAP have started awarding an additional point for this feature. As a consequence other manufacturers are starting to add [it]. Give it time and most or all will be on board with this.”

Small, but useful, additional items like this are the future of road safety, according to Ford’s Paul Fay. “These days . . . there’s no single magic bullet that’s going to have the same effect as introducing the seatbelt . . . . However . . . there are going to be a lot of incremental systems technologies, which . . . when you put them all together they’re going to continue to improve road safety.”

Just don’t expect your insurance company to reward you for the safety choices you make.