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Mike Waters' blog: 4 February - Safety in numbers
Date: 04 February 2015
Now and again you will see a serious road accident on the news, or you might know someone that is involved in one, and it might make you consider how safe you are when you drive. In this respect, you really do have your destiny in your own hands because your driving style and the way that you behave behind the wheel has a massive impact on your road risk.
However, even really good, really conscientious drivers can have bad accidents either because of the actions of other drivers, because they make a genuine mistake or because of circumstances out of their control.
This is the point at which you rely on your vehicle to keep you safe and is the reason the manufacturers spend millions of pounds on the safety performance of their vehicles. It's also the reason that you need to be aware of NCAP safety ratings.
NCAP is the organisation that assesses the safety of new cars across Europe and the stats that they produce on new vehicles are really important. Even if it's not your number one priority, the safety performance of a vehicle should be a key part of the decision making mix.
NCAP has just released its top performing cars of 2014 and there's some interesting reading. In particular, larger cars are performing at a much better level than smaller, cheaper vehicles with the Skoda Fabia the only Supermini to achieve the top 5-star rating.
Most new cars entering the market perform well in the safety tests but obviously some are better than others. If you're thinking about selecting a new vehicle, alongside CO2, MPG, acceleration, the price and a raft of other measures, NCAP ratings are definitely not a stat that you should ignore.
Mike Waters is senior insight & consultancy manager at Arval, the leading vehicle leasing and fleet management company.
