PLAYING WITH OUR LIVES
Did your car maker cut corners on safety features?
The revelation on Friday that one of SA’s best selling bakkies, the Nissan NP300 double-cab, has a zero safety rating for the front passengers would probably have come as a big shock to everyone but Nissan.
“All the manufacturers know how their vehicles perform in a crash test and they know the risk to the occupants,” said Alejandro Furas, technical director of Global NCAP (New Car Assessment Programme).
“They are using very old technology in cars they sell in developing countries, so it’s up to us to tell consumers how unsafe these are – the manufacturers won’t.”
That’s just what Global NCAP, in conjunction with SA’s Automobile Association (AA) did in the case of the NP300 and three top-selling hatchbacks – the Toyota Yaris, Hyundai i20 and Kia Picanto.
Between them, those hatchbacks make up 65% of sales of cars under R200,000.
Posing as private buyers, they bought the base models from local dealerships and had them transported to a crash test facility outside Munich.
I was among a small group of SA journalists which Global NCAP and the AA flew to Munich to witness those crash tests – well, two of them at least.
Given the level of detail that goes into the preparation of the cars and the crash test dummies – two adults up front, and two children ( three and 18 months old) – the engineers can only crash one car a day.
So we saw the i20 propelled into the barrier on the first day, and the Yaris on the second.
Both the Hyundai i20 and the Kia Picanto were given a threestar safety rating for adults and two stars for children, the seat carrying the three-year-old in the Picanto having come loose from its fastening on impact.
Best of the four was the Toyota Yaris, scoring a three-star safety rating for both adult and child passengers.
Only the Yaris had three point belts in all positions, the seatbelt being any car’s primary safety mechanism. “That’s of high concern to us,” Furas said.
Shockingly, Global NCAP declared that only the Picanto’s body shell was “stable”, although its front footwell area was declared unstable. An unstable body shells means the car is “not capable of withstanding further loadings”.
In other words, a crash at higher speed would probably see the vehicles disintegrate. Those same cars sold in other markets all have stable body shells.
By far the most spectacular, and shocking test crash was that of the Nissan NP300. The front crumpled completely as it hit that barrier, and the driver’s door popped open.
The children in the back were slightly better off, mainly because the crumpled front protected them, hence the two star safety rating for children.
Sadly, we journalists missed seeing that crash, because the bakkie was held up by European custom agents.
Furas didn’t mince his words at the Johannesburg press conference revealing the results on Friday. “For Nissan to call that vehicle Hardbody is misleading,” he said, “as is claiming that it has a ‘safety shield’.”
Here’s the thing – the motor manufacturers know how to equip cars with safety equipment that saves lives; lots of them – electronic stability control (ESC), which stops cars from skidding out of control, or recover from a skid; front and side airbag protection, and pedestrian protection. They just choose not to put them into cars sold into some markets, such as South Africa.
A version of the Hyundai i20, for example, is sold in Europe with ESC as a standard feature, along with six airbags (as opposed to two in the SA model) and autonomous emergency braking. And it sells for less than à11,000 (R179,640), compared with the equivalent of about à14,000 (R228,630) for the SA version which has just two airbags and ABS brakes.
They choose not to because developing countries such as South Africa lack legislation around vehicle safety, and the car buying population, especially at the entry level end of the market, lack awareness of safety issues.
So what’s the solution? In other countries, government incentivising motor manufactures to add specs such as ESC, with tax breaks, has been hugely successful.
“And if one manufacturer decides to go for five-star safety in a vehicle, its competitors are sure to follow suit,” Furas said.
By far the biggest factor is consumer awareness. If consumers rate safety features along with price, manufacturers would soon see the merit in putting ESC and other life-saving protections into their cars.
If any nation should be obsessed with car safety features, it’s South Africans – our road death toll is among the highest in the world: 14,000 last year.
It makes sense to listen to what those crash test dummies tell us – it’s that which leads to the NCAP safety ratings.
We consumers get what we are willing to put up with. It’s high time we started demanding more from motor manufacturers in car safety features.
They are using very old technology in cars they sell in developing countries
Vehicle crash tests conducted at an international test facility in Germany on models sold in SA reveal that some car makers are putting the safety of their customers in Europe ahead of those in Africa.
International vehicle safety organisation, Global NCAP together with the Automobile Association of SA (AA SA) tested vehicles sold in SA after similar tests were done on budget cars in 2017.
Four vehicles were tested: the Hyundai i20; Kia Picanto; Toyota Yaris; and Nissan NP300 Hardbody.
Nissan NP300 Hardbody
The worst performer was the Nissan, which received a zero star rating and just two stars for child occupant protection after an international standard frontal offset collision test at 64km/h. According to the test results, “the vehicle structure collapsed during the crash test and it was rated as unstable”.
“It is astonishing that a global company like Nissan can produce a car today as poorly engineered as this,” said Global NCAP secretary-general David Ward.
“The NP300 Hardbody is ridiculously misnamed as its body shell collapses. Nissan also claim the car benefits from a so-called ‘safety shield’ but this is grossly misleading. Our test shows that the occupant compartment completely fails to absorb the energy of the crash resulting in a high risk of fatality or injury.”
The result should ring alarm bells for consumers and also for Nissan, which has already been heavily criticised for selling the Datsun Go in SA and the Renault-Nissan Alliance vehicle, the Renault Kwid after they performed poorly in safety tests.
It could strike a major blow for Nissan, which is aiming to re-position itself as a leader in the light commercial vehicle market in Africa, particularly with the NP300 Hardbody. In an interview with Business Day in August 2018, Nissan SA MD Mike Whitfield advised that the company planned to continue producing this model in SA.
“For the next 10 years we’re going to keep selling these (NP300 and NP200) into Africa,” Whitfield said. He also said the company planned to increase production in SA from the current 40,000/year to more than 120,000 by 2023, predominantly by exporting the NP300.
Hyundai i20
However, it is Hyundai that could come in for the most condemnation over the results of its i20 hatchback.
In October, Hyundai sold 655 i20 models in SA, but while its three-star adult occupant crash test result will be deemed acceptable, there are serious questions surrounding whether Hyundai provides different body shells for the model it sells in SA compared to those in Europe and other markets.
In its report, Global NCAP said of the i20 that “the body shell was rated as unstable and it was not capable of withstanding further loadings”.
We witnessed that for ourselves when we attended the tests in Germany in October. Close inspection revealed that the roof and A-pillar buckled in the crash, in direct contrast with the same parts of the body shell in a test of an i20 sold in Europe by Euro NCAP in 2015. In that test there was no deformity of those elements and the vehicle received a four-star safety rating on a much stricter scale.
According to Global NCAP technical director Alejandro Furas, there is a clear difference in the materials used in the vehicle sold in Europe and the vehicle sold in SA. If correct, then that raises serious concerns about whether Hyundai is putting profit ahead of the safety of consumers in SA and Africa. Toyota Yaris
The latest generation of Toyota’s Yaris was also tested and also scored three stars for adult occupant safety. It too received a report stating that “the vehicle structure was rated as unstable and offered marginal to good general adult occupant protection”.
However, it scored marginally higher than the Hyundai and provided a better level of rear seat child protection.
This version of the Yaris, manufactured in India, is not sold in Europe, so it is not possible to compare a vehicle sold there with the one in SA.
Kia Picanto
Hyundai’s sister company, Kia, received a three-star rating for its small Picanto, which was also the only vehicle tested that had a body shell described as “stable” in the crash test.
“What these results show is that three vehicles priced lower than the Nissan, produced three-star ratings for adult occupancy indicating that safety does not have to be tied to price,” said AA SA CEO Collins Khumalo.
“They also emphasise that cars may not be what they seem based purely on looks and descriptions, and that until many more vehicles are tested, this issue may be a much bigger problem throughout Africa than we originally believed.”
Furas said the criteria for tests on cars sold in Africa are not as strict as for those in Europe.
“If we applied Euro standards to South African cars, then probably most cars would be zero rated,” he said.
But the aim is to establish a safety programme for SA and Africa and, to do so, manufacturers and industry organisations, as well as the government, need to become involved with the programme.
“Manufacturers will not chase European standards because they know they will not pass,” said Furas. “They will chase the five-star standard for SA.”
“The Safer Cars for Africa campaign introduces essential transparency to the SA car market and these results show that consumers still get a raw deal,” said Saul Billingsley, executive director of the FIA Foundation, which supported the tests.