Brendan Seery

WAS quite amused to see most motoring journalists clambering on to their safety high horses with the release of the Renault Kwid. Not terribly safe was the conclusion: because the car has only one air bag and no anti-lock brakes.

I was amused because it hasn’t seemed to occur to many people that new cars have supposedly been getting safer by leaps and bounds over the past 10 years. Most new cars have at least one air bag and only the bottom-range versions have no ABS.

At the top end of the scale, some luxury vehicles and SUVs have up to nine airbags, and sophisticated electronic collision avoidance and mitigation systems.

So why was the festive season death toll on our roads up this year? Well, because South Africans are idiots when they get behind the wheel – and whether that wheel is in a Kwid or in a Merc, they’re going to get into trouble.

What does bother me about the Kwid is not its solitary air bag and no ABS. I drove my 1989 VW Jetta for 25 years without those luxuries and had only one collision: when

II reversed into someone. Without ABS and air bags, I learnt to keep my following distance, especially in the rain and have always driven defensively.

What bothers me about the Kwid is if you do happen to hit something, there is not a lot of protection from the thin, flimsy metal around you.

When I sat in the driver’s seat of the Kwid, I discovered my head was not that far away from the roof… and I am not tall. There is no way to adjust the height of the seat. The Kwid rides on skinny tyres and has a high centre-of-gravity so the risk of a roll over is higher than in