KEY POINTS:
Imagine a world where no one died in car accidents. It could be a reality. Safety technology in motor vehicles has developed to the point where most crash fatalities could be avoided.
Accidents will always happen: "The question is, do you have to die?" asks Lauchlan McIntosh, the chairman of the Canberra-based Australasian New Car Assessment Programme (Ancap), an independent body that crash tests vehicles and rates them for safety.
"The answer is, no you don't."
But people are dying, over 400 each year on New Zealand roads, 1500 in Australia.
Ancap - partially funded by Land Transport NZ and the New Zealand Automobile Association with a host of Australian agencies - believes one-third of those deaths could have been avoided if all cars were fitted with a revolutionary driver aid called Electronic Stability Control (ESC), a computerised system that can keep cars on the road when they would normally spin out.
ESC, says Mr McIntosh, is the biggest advance in road safety since the seatbelt.
Still more lives would be saved if all cars were manufactured to maximum safety standards. And even more if all cars were fitted with front, side and curtain airbags (another recent innovation that prevents motorists from taking side-on impacts to the head during accidents).
But just 25 per cent of new cars coming into the New Zealand fleet have ESC. Government minimum safety standards mean vehicles can rate not a single star on Ancap's five-star scale and yet still be considered legally safe. And, when they are available, many safety features often come bundled into an optional luxury upgrade package alongside leather seats, larger engines and sun roofs.
Safety, it seems, is still an optional extra. It's a situation Mr McIntosh describes as "outrageous".
But times may be a changing. When Holden switched production of its Barina from Europe to Korea, the cheaper construction resulted in a drop from its 2001 four-star ranking to two stars in 2006.
When Ancap's test results were published, the Barina's market share in its class in Australia fell from 16 to 8 per cent. "Poor safety equals poor sales - if you can get that message out," says Mr McIntosh.
"But the reality is that car is still being sold in Australia [and New Zealand] today."
Cost, not surprisingly, is the sticking point when it comes to safety.
Until consumer pressure demands that all cars are built with "premium" safety features as standard, no single manufacturer will do it. But when one manufacturer makes the jump they likely all will, says Mr McIntosh.
Most European manufacturers are now committed to building only cars that will achieve a five-star safety rating.
The key to consumer demand for safety reaching tipping point probably lies with the companies and Government departments whose fleets account for over 50 per cent of new vehicles brought into the country.
LTNZ and ACC are campaigning fleet buyers to purchase safer vehicles.
"We have been encouraging fleet buyers and managers to make safety a priority in their purchasing decisions for several years," said LTNZ spokesman Andrew Knackstedt.
On-selling meant "today's company car is often tomorrow's family car".
It's not as if the car industry has been standing still on safety. Even without revolutionary features such as ESC, the progress made over the last 15 years has been considerable.
When Ancap crashed a 1989 Holden Astra head on into a 2005 model at 64km/h the results were staggering. The passenger compartment of the '89 model was wrecked while that of the '05 model remained intact. Readings from the crash test dummies that measure head trauma showed a score of 2500 for the occupants of the '89 car. A score of 1800 would result in almost certain death. At 2500, the occupants were "very, very dead", said McIntosh.
The reading for the '05 model, in which front air bags deployed during the crash, was 400-500, meaning the occupants would have walked away with a "slight headache".
"In a small car 15 years ago if you hit a wall at 64km/h you would probably die. Today, you would probably survive.
"You've got to give the manufacturing industry credit for the progress they've made but you've also got to keep the pressure on them."
Mr McIntosh sites the Barina ratings slide as an example of manufacturers believing it was in their interests to sacrifice safety to deliver a vehicle at a particular price point.
"There is no need for two-star cars any more. It is outrageous that they are still being sold."
And there is a caveat to that road-fatality free world.
"The criminally insane - the people who refuse to wear seatbelts and drive like lunatics - will always kill themselves," said Mr McIntosh, "and, unfortunately, they will take other people with them".
Crash tests
* Ancap is an independent body that crash tests new cars at several facilities in Australia.
* Land Transport NZ contributes $125,000 a year and has a seat on the board.
* The NZ AA also helps fund Ancap.
* Around 12 new models are tested each year. Each test costs around $150,000, not including the price of the four cars that usually have to be purchased for the tests.
* Dummies are placed within cars with sensors that measure the level of trauma when the cars are crashed in a variety of ways.
* Cars are given a rating between none and five stars, with five being the safest.
* Around 10 to 15 per cent of cars on NZ roads have a four-star or higher safety rating. In some Australian states the figure is closer to 50 per cent.
* The results of crash tests on over 100 popular New Zealand cars can be found at www.crashtest.govt.nz
