Victorian Motorists Value Looks over Safety - RACV Study

A SURVEY CONDUCTED by the RACV has found that an alarming number of Victorian drivers value a car’s appearance and size above its safety equipment.

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/wp-...control-01.jpg

The research, conducted to examine awareness of vehicle safety features, discovered that the overwhelming majority of the study’s 800-plus participants had little knowledge of modern vehicle safety, with just one percent of respondents knowing about the safety applications of traction control.

"Only 29 per cent of participants spontaneously listed airbags as a safety feature, 17 per cent of people mentioned ABS (Anti-lock Braking Systems) and even more concerning, only one per cent knew about traction control," Brian Negus, RACV General Manager Public Policy, said.

"What is staggering about these statistics is that many of the technologies have been on the market for more than a decade yet there is little recognition of the products or their importance."

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/wp-.../06/esp_01.jpg

Just under 20 percent of respondents could not identify any safety features of their own car, while 10 percent expressed a reluctance to pay for extra safety features to be installed into their vehicle.

"Just spending $1000 to include ESC (electronic stability control) in a new vehicle can reduce the likelihood of crashes by about 34 per cent and curtain airbags can minimise the risk of injury by up to 45 per cent," said Mr Negus.

The Federal Government recently passed legislation to make electronic stability control mandatory on all new passenger vehicles sold from 2011 onwards.

However, with older vehicles not equipped with the potentially life-saving technology (or even ABS or airbags, in many cases) and the wider Australian public apparently unaware of the true value of modern safety equipment, it appears education - as well as legislation - may be needed to properly tackle this country’s road safety issues.

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/wp-...esp_button.jpg

Victorian Motorists Value Looks, Size Over Safety: RACV Study | The Motor Report: Auto News And Reviews

[Source: TMR]

I suspect the RACV are after a little free media exposure. Their way of presenting their survey "results" paints a picture that is contrary to what the car makers know about the expectations of their customers.

Putting a different spin on their data you could say "over 80% of people could identify the safety features of their car and 90% are willing to pay more for those safety features". I think that's actually an extremely good result.

Which makes their concluding remark that "the wider Australian public apparently unaware of the true value of modern safety equipment" an obvious falsehood.

While I agree that more driver education is necessary, I think the RACV are irresponsibly doing the cause of road safety a disservice by misrepresenting the facts this way.

I agree with Mal here, people can spin statistics to suit their agenda and this is an obvious example of this, When I first looked at the OP I read it as though "Just under 20 percent of respondents could identify any safety features of their own car" because I skim read, this is the type of reader they are trying to catch out by the careful wording of the article.

Actually, the statistics quoted in this article do not tell the whole picture.
For example, people were asked, "Which of the following do you have in your car? Were these standard or fitted as a paid option?" In a list of 11 technologies, GPS was the one which had the highest number of people saying 'yes, I have this and I paid extra for it.' When asked about ESC, not one person said they paid extra for it. 11% of people said they had it in their car and it came as standard, 49% said they were aware of ESC but didnt have it in their car and 34% said they didnt know what ESC was and didnt have it in their car and 6% weren't sure if they had ESC in their car or not.

I guess its hard to tell the whole picture in a few statistics quoted in a media release. But RACV conducted both phone interviews and detailed focus group discussions and what we found was that not enough people really understood what these technologies were, how they worked and how beneficial they could be. Many people did recognise that safety was an important feature, but when it came to actually buying a car..they were not asking the dealer explicitly for safety features and tended to assume that if the car was new, the necessary features would be included - which is unfortunately not always the case particularly in overseas models. In the end, factors such as looks and price were higher on the shopping list. Many people told us that they also found a lot of the jargon confusing and daunting.

What the excerpt above doesnt go on to say, is that this research was used to form the basis of an awareness campaign to try and get more people not only learning a bit more about the technologies -but actually demanding these features in their car purchases and telling their friends to do the same. 'Between Friends' is the name of the campaign and there are a bunch of factsheets and an animated video to explain these technologies in a really easy-to-understand way.

You are welcome to have a look at the racv website at racv.com.au\roadsafety . The campaign is asking people to jump on the website, learn a bit more about ITS and share the information with family and friends. There's also more information on the stats on our website.

I hope this helps.