How many times have you heard someone say that they don’t make ’em like they used to? Well, they’re right. When if comes to safety, today’s cars are vastly better than those made a decade ago, and worlds away from the trusty 1970’s Kingswood or Falcon. So how are they better?

Josh Gliddon highlights the most important safety features in the current (and next) generation of cars.

STABILITY CONTROL
Who’d have thought that ASC, ASR, DSC, ESP, PSM and StabiliTrak all mean exactly the same thing? Stability control first appeared in luxury cars nearly two decades ago, and is now available in almost every new car on the market. From time to time there’s even a push to make it mandatory equipment, but NRMA believes regulation of vehicle safety features takes too long to get to the market so is supporting national moves to encourage new car buyers to specify stability control when they buy a new vehicle.

So, what does it do? Stability control comes in varying levels of complexity, but almost all of them take information about the car’s speed and braking, and its yaw, which is the movement of the car around its vertical axis, to determine whether things are getting out of hand.

When the computer realises that the car is in a difficult situation it can vary the braking pressure between the wheels and automatically reduce the throttle to help bring things under control. Generally, it works extremely well, but drivers need to be aware of two things.

Drivers need to understand how stability control works in their car, and the best way to do that, says Jack Haley, NRMA Vehicle Policy Specialist, is to get themselves onto a vacant road or racetrack and try the system out by emergency braking, steering around objects and steering while braking. It’s often worth signing up for an advanced driving course, not just for the novelty of driving around a racetrack, but for getting the feel of stability control as it’s meant to be used.

The other thing that is worth remembering is that stability control can’t change the laws of physics. The system can get you out of a nasty situation, but there are times when all the safety technology in the world isn’t going to prevent a crash. 

If you arrive at a corner too fast, you’ll go off the road irrespective of how much technology you have assisting you. That’s why safe, educated driving is paramount.

ABS and EMERGENCY BRAKE ASSIST
Unlike stability control, anti-lock brakes only come with one acronym, but it is adapted from the German, Antiblockier-Bremssystem, which is why it’s ABS and not ALB.

Virtually every new car comes with some form of ABS. It’s such a basic safety feature that you shouldn’t consider a car, either new or second-hand, without it. So what does it do?

Without ABS, a driver in an emergency braking situation will tend to lock the wheels. This means that you’re skidding and totally out of control. There’s no way to steer a car with locked wheels.

Anti-lock brakes use electronic smarts to identify a wheel that’s about to lock. It then briefly reduces braking pressure to that wheel, allowing it to turn thus letting the driver apply full braking pressure, stay in control and steer around the object that they’re braking for.

Most drivers won’t experience anti-lock brakes until they’re in an emergency, and Jack says anecdotal evidence suggests that some people release the brakes when the ABS kicks in. That’s because an ABS-equipped car’s brake pedal will pulse or chatter in an emergency situation. It’s a slightly unsettling feeling; but practising on a quiet street or an NRMA referred driving school will let you get a sense of what the car will do when you are braking very hard. (NRMA can give you advice on post-licence driver training courses. Call 1300 696 762.)

It’s also wise to reacquaint yourself with your car’s ABS every so often. Again, ABS won’t defy the laws of physics, but it may just help you avoid a crash – and stay alive.

Because of stories that suggest people don’t apply enough braking pressure in an emergency, or that they release the brakes because of the ABS pulsations, some manufacturers are building brake assist technology into their cars. This technology, which is so far confined to the more expensive end of the market, uses electronics to identify an emergency braking situation, then applies extra pressure to the braking circuit. Think of it as an extra foot on the brake pedal. Like most automotive technologies, this one will eventually filter down to the cheaper end of the market. Look for brake assist on cars under $20,000 within the decade.

SEATBELTS and CHILD RESTRAINTS
ABS and stability control are meant to help you avoid having a crash in the first place. But if you are involved in a crash, the most important safety measure is still wearing a seatbelt. It’s also important to ensure that you keep your kids in child restraints and boosters for as long as possible.

Volvo safety engineer, Dr Lotta Jakobsson, says her company’s research shows that kids should be in boosters up until they’re 11 years old unless, of course, the child is large enough to wear a lap/sash seatbelt appropriately. That means having the sash snugly across the shoulder and the lap component low and tight across their hips.

Kids should also never be placed in a seat that has an airbag in front of it if at all possible. A firing airbag can maim or kill kids, and even adults, if they’re too close to the airbag when it fires. This reinforces the necessity of ensuring everyone wears their seatbelts properly, as they are designed to keep you in the correct position for proper airbag deployment.

Adults, too, can also benefit from the proper use of seatbelts. Newer vehicles use seatbelt pre-tensioners that fire in conjunction with the airbag, tightening the belt around the occupant. More advanced versions of this anticipate the crash, much like the brake assist technology does, and automatically tighten the belt in anticipation of a crash, but these haven’t yet filtered down to the mass market.

AIRBAGS
Driver and passenger airbags are commonplace, but the real breakthrough is the development of additional airbags. Even the diminutive Toyota Yaris offers the option of knee bags that help protect the occupant’s legs in a frontal impact. On the horizon are foot bags that protect the delicate bones in the feet and lower leg. But of all the airbag technologies, the most misunderstood are curtain airbags. They’re often confused with side airbags, but their role in a T-Bone accident is vital, says Jack.

“They inflate in an accident like every other airbag to protect the occupant against impacts from poles or other vehicles,” he says. “But then they stay inflated; whereas other airbags deflate faster than the occupant can detect, so they absorb energy efficiently and don’t obstruct vision.”

By staying inflated, curtain airbags keep the upper body, particularly the head and arms, inside the car if it’s hit from the side and help to prevent the ejection of unbelted occupants if the vehicle subsequently rolls over. Many manufacturers offer curtain airbags, but they’re certainly not standard equipment. Perhaps they should be – side impacts, particularly when a large vehicle hits a smaller car in the passenger compartment, are the most fatal. That’s because you’ve got the entire body structure ahead of you to absorb the crash in a frontal impact.

In a side impact, there’s only the door between you and what’s hitting you. That’s why modern cars, if you look closely, have much deeper flanks with pronounced shoulders running the length of the car. Those deep flanks help absorb and disperse crash energy before it gets into the cabin.

VEHICLE COMPATIBILITY
Have you ever sat in traffic and had a large SUV pull up next to you, its bumper at the same height as your head? And did you idly wonder what might happen if that same bumper was heading straight towards your head in a T-Bone crash?

Jack Haley says there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that it wouldn’t be pretty, which is why curtain airbags are vital – they could be the only thing between you and a larger car. It’s also why automotive design is like an arms race, with today’s light cars, like the Yaris, having similar interior room and far superior crash management to the large cars of 10 and 20 years ago.

That ‘arms race’ is simply fuelled by vehicle incompatibility. Drivers of smaller cars need protection from larger cars. But what if you drive an SUV? What can you do to minimise its impact on a smaller vehicle? Put simply, don’t fit a bullbar. NRMA does not support the use of bullbars in urban areas.

Bullbars are unfriendly towards pedestrians and they defeat the smart strategies that car designers have come up with to help larger vehicles absorb more than their share of the energy in a crash. A bullbar can act like a battering ram, intruding further into the cabin of a smaller car and posing a greater threat to its occupants.

There’s another good reason to avoid bullbars, says Jack. “NRMA Insurance has found that vehicles with bullbars are more expensive to repair.”

It sounds strange but makes sense when you think about how modern cars (and SUVs) are designed to absorb energy. “A bullbar transfers crash energy across the entire front of the vehicle and can damage parts of the vehicle that might not have [otherwise] been affected by the crash,” says Jack.

Rural drivers like bullbars because they can prevent an animal impact from becoming a major event that might leave the driver stranded by the side of the road.

“There’s some justification for this,” says Jack. “But it’s better if you can avoid driving at dusk and dawn, when animals aren’t so common.” Removable bullbars would be an even better idea, as they’d allow drivers to put one on for rural work and remove it for urban driving. But so far, that’s all they are – a good idea that’s not available. 

PEDESTRIAN SAFETY and VISIBILITY
Have a close look at a modern car and you’ll notice deep flanks (designed to help in a side impact) and taller bonnets flowing down into low fronts. You’ll also notice that the pillars holding the roof up are thicker than they once were. There are good reasons for all these design features, but in some ways they’re working against one another.

Open the bonnet on some recent model cars and you’ll see lots of room between the engine’s hard points and both the bonnet and the grille. This isn’t just design whimsy. High bonnets are designed to stop pedestrians hitting the hard components that make up the engine and suspension. The bonnet is intended to crush and absorb a pedestrian impact, while the low snout is designed to sweep a pedestrian up, onto the bonnet and away from being run over by the wheels.

This is another area where bullbars can really confound car designers. Instead of sweeping a pedestrian up and out of harm’s way (well, relatively speaking – no one wants to get hit by a car), they’ll knock the pedestrian forward with lots of force and a high risk of head impact with the hard road surface. If the force doesn’t do significant injury, then the wheels could, since the hapless pedestrian is usually knocked into the vehicle’s path.

But it’s better not to hit a pedestrian at all, and that’s where those thick pillars can literally get in the way, creating blind spots where pedestrians can lurk, unseen until it’s too late.

“This isn’t as insurmountable as it seems,” says Jack. “Car makers could use a lattice structure in their pillars, which means that drivers could see right through them, or the designers could put the thickness of the pillar at the top and the bottom.”

BASIC MAINTENANCE
Next time you’re walking through a shopping mall carpark, take a look at the tyres of the cars you pass. Chances are you’ll see a good number with the outer edges scrubbed so badly that they’ve gone bald. Scary stuff.

Basic maintenance is the most overlooked safety system around

The best stability control, ABS system and brake assist available are reliant on those four patches of rubber. It’s the tyres that ultimately dictate how well your car stops, accelerates and manoeuvres in an emergency.

It’s easy to keep tyres in good condition. Check the pressure every week, and don’t rely on the service station air pump for an accurate reading. Good quality tyre pressure gauges are inexpensive and available from motor accessory stores. The manufacturer’s recommended tyre pressures are on a placard that’s usually mounted on the inside of the driver’s door. If you’re in doubt, check the car’s handbook.

Tyres have a shelf life, and manufacturers are now recommending that they’re replaced every five years, regardless of how worn they are (tyres have wear indicators in the tread – look for a small horizontal bar deep in the tread. If it’s level with the rest of the tyre surface, it’s time to replace the tyre). Tyres have a shelf life because the compounds used in their manufacture degrade over time and lose their resilience and strength. And while some manufacturers fit their vehicles with tyre repair options for you to use in the event of a flat, such as Run Flat Tyres, Space-Saver tyres and ‘pressure-pack’ repair tyres, the best and safest option is to carry a spare, the same as your other tyres, in good condition.

Your mechanic should check your brakes every service, and a good mechanic will tell you about the maintenance items coming up, not just the work that needs doing immediately. Don’t depend on the pink slip inspection you have to get on new vehicles after four years – it only evaluates braking effectiveness on the day of the test, not whether your vehicle’s braking system is in good condition.

SAFETY TESTING
Cars that are sold in Australia must meet the basic standards that are set out in the Australian Design Rules (ADRs). These rules dictate everything from emissions to the design of child safety restraints that you should fit to the car (Australia’s child restraints are some of the best in the world). But the ADRs don’t tell you how one car compares to another, which is where the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) comes in.

All of Australia’s and New Zealand’s motoring clubs, the Australian state governments and the FIA Foundation support ANCAP. The Australian Federal Government is absent – its position is that the ADRs are sufficient.

ANCAP ratings are based around three tests: an offset frontal impact at a higher speed than the ADR test, a side impact and a pedestrian impact. There’s also an optional pole impact test. Cars are awarded a star-rating depending on how they perform – the higher the star, the better the car’s performance in a crash.

ANCAP is a great tool if you’re buying a new car, but what about second-hand cars? Fortunately, there’s a Used Car Safety Rating (UCSR) that takes crash data from about one and a half million crashes and provides two ratings.

The first is a crashworthiness rating, which indicates the protection the car offers its occupants in a severe crash. The second rating is its aggressivity, which is the risk that the car poses to other vehicles it crashes into. This year, 305 vehicles have an occupant protection rating and 284 vehicles have an aggressivity rating using the UCSR system.

The final study worth consideration is ANCIS, which is the Australian National Crash In-depth Study.

“This is an in-depth look at real world crashes,” says Jack. “An engineer visits the crash site, and then a nurse follows up with the person or people injured in the crash. The data is then collected, and features that cause injury – whether it’s something inside the car or road design – are fed back to the traffic authorities and the car companies.”

Although ANCIS won’t provide immediate information about how to buy a safer car (or which roads are safer than others), the data obtained through these studies makes a significant overall contribution to road and vehicle safety.

For more information on ANCAP, visit ANCAP crash tests. For UCSR information, visit NRMA's used car safety ratings. For the latest ANCIS report, visit Monash University's Accident Research Centre.