Revealed: Most dangerous cars on road

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Airbags will not guarantee survival in a head-on road crash, especially if the opposing vehicle is a lumbering four-wheel-drive.

But visiting Australian safety researcher Max Cameron knows which cars he least wants to be caught driving in a tight spot.

"A Daihatsu Charade ... a Ford Festiva, and especially any small car of Korean origin," he said yesterday at the launch of a booklet offering safety ratings of 255 used vehicle models.

Professor Cameron will stick for now with his second-hand Saab 9000, thanks, which he bought from a departing colleague at Melbourne's Monash University Accident Research Centre.

His team has analysed police data from more than a million "real-world" crashes on Australian and New Zealand roads to compile safety ratings of 255 used vehicle models.

It is the first annual edition to become available to New Zealand drivers, and the Land Transport Safety Authority has ordered 50,000 for free distribution.

Independent Motor Vehicle Dealers Association chief David Vinsen said the booklet was full of valuable information for consumers and his organisation would urge the Commerce Commission to allow its safety ratings to be included on window cards of cars for sale.

This follows a tightening of rules last year forbidding the inclusion on the cards of even such basic information as the number of previous owners.

The guide not surprisingly confirms that drivers of large cars generally have better than average chances of walking away from smashes unhurt.

Neither is it any great revelation that the larger mass of their vehicles means they are much more likely to cause death or serious injury to other drivers.

But size is not always everything, as a handful of small or medium cars give their drivers as good a survival chance as monsters of the road, while offering average protection to those of opposing vehicles.

Professor Cameron said this was encouraging, as it showed opportunities for safety-conscious motorists to buy less vehicles of less "aggressivity".

He said drivers of vehicles with significantly below-average ratings were at least 30 per cent more likely to be seriously injured or killed in a bad smash than of those with markedly better scores.

Large four-wheel-drives such as 1982-94 Range Rovers, 1988-2002 Nissan Patrols and 1990-1997 Toyota Landcruisers give their own drivers significantly better than average safeguards, but much worse than average protection to those of vehicles they smash into.

One compact four-wheel-drive listed in the guide, the Daihatsu Rocky, is bad news all round, with much worse than average protection listed for both its own driver and those of opposing vehicles.

Safety-conscious motorists don't need to fork out for luxury cars such as Saabs, 700/900 series Volvos or Honda Legends for the superior protection they offer.

The Holden Astra TR, Peugeot 306 and Toyota Corollas made from 1998 to 2001 are listed as significantly above average small cars for the safety of their drivers, and the Ford Mondeo, Holden Vectra and Subaru Legacy (1999-2002) as medium-size vehicles in the same league.

Professor Cameron said this was a definite improvement on last year's Australian-only edition of the booklet, in which no small or medium car was rated significantly safer than average for its driver.

But the most modern vehicles are not necessarily the safest.

The guide rates the 2002 Toyota Corolla and the 1998-2002 Holden Astra TS as giving their drivers only average protection, compared with the significantly above-average ratings of their immediate predecessors.

But the 1984-86 version of the Astra has a significantly worse than average rating, as has the 1982-88 Ford Laser, 1984-87 Honda Civic and more than a dozen light cars, including several models of the Daihatsu Charade, one of Professor Cameron's musts to avoid.

No sports cars or vans were rated significantly better than average, and the Holden Rodeo 1996-98 was the only commercial ute to receive the big safety tick.

Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven welcomed the inclusion for the first time of New Zealand crash data in the Australian research, saying people needed to take responsibility for their own safety and that of other road users when choosing a car to buy.

Professor Cameron's team calculated injury risks from police reports of 1,070,369 drivers involved in tow-away crashes in Victoria and New South Wales from 1987 to 2002 and in New Zealand, Queensland, and Western Australia from 1991 to 2002.

The booklet has a chilling disclaimer, warning that safety features may boost survival chances but do not make drivers indestructible.

"Whether or not you die or are seriously injured in a crash also depends on how safely you drive your vehicle."

Free copies of the Used Car Safety Ratings booklet for passenger vehicles built between 1982 to 2002 can be obtained from LTSA service agents or by ringing the agency's helpdesk on 0800-699000.

LTSA used car safety ratings