Safer car laws will push up prices

By SCOTT MacLEOD transport reporter

New Government safety rules could add $1000 to the cost of a used car but make it more likely that its occupants would survive a crash.

The average used car would be newer, safer and costlier under the proposals, which would effectively ban the importing of Japanese cars built before 1994.

The changes are among 11 proposals to improve vehicle safety which the Government unveiled yesterday as part of a strategy to halve the road toll by 2010.

They include tougher border controls, compulsory replacement of used airbags, better seatbelts and banning flood-damaged vehicles.

But the widest-reaching proposal is for a Frontal Impact Rule to set a tough new standard for crash safety in older imported vehicles.

Land Transport Safety Authority figures show that 50,000 of the 120,000 used cars imported last year would have been barred under the proposal.

Industry groups estimate that used imports meeting the rule will cost $1000 more but survival in a crash will be 20 per cent more likely.

At present, cars built after March 1, 1999, must meet international crash safety standards to be registered here. The new law, to be introduced on April 1, 2002, would push back the date indefinitely so all passenger imports would have to meet the standards unless they are four-wheel-drives, utes or classic cars.

A paper released yesterday by Transport Minister Mark Gosche said the proposal would have a major impact on the importing of used vehicles. Japan, which supplies most used cars to New Zealand, started phasing in front-impact standards only between 1994 and 1996. Importers who shipped in older Japanese cars would no longer be able to register them here.

The 820,000 vehicles on our roads manufactured before 1996 will not be affected by the front-impact proposal because they are already here.

The consensus among industry groups yesterday was that the rule was double-edged, changing the balance between safety and cost.

The manager of vehicle policy at the LTSA, Simon Whiteley, said the front-impact standards covered passenger cabin strength, collapsible steering columns, seatbelts, padding and crumple zones. Up to 20 per cent more people would survive crashes in vehicles meeting the standards.

The managing director of the NZ Car Safety Trust, Gordon McKeown, said the fleet was ageing because used car importers were buying old Japanese vehicles with poorer safety equipment. They picked those vehicles because nobody else wanted them, meaning they were cheap.

"The public look at power steering and other features and don't realise that a two-year age difference can make a big difference in safety."

The editor of the Dog and Lemon Guide used-car manual, Clive Matthew-Wilson, also supported the law change.

"The Government has effectively joined the rest of the world in insisting that our cars are safe as well as cheap. New Zealand has been the garbage dump of the world for too long."

But the chief executive officer of the Independent Motor Vehicle Dealers' Association, David Lynn, called the proposal "effectively a seven-year ban by stealth." The ban would limit the number of cars that could be imported, pushing up prices. It also meant poorer people would be forced to buy newer cars.

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