Latest news with #ETSC
Telegraph
01-04-2025
- Automotive
- Telegraph
Approving US-made cars would make UK roads less safe
New cars sold in Britain could become less safe if America gets its way in ongoing US-EU trade talks. Currently there's a chasm in safety standards between US-market vehicles and those approved for sale in Europe, which Britain is still aligned to for safety legislation. Although there's not currently much of an appetite for American-made cars in Britain, the US wants its vehicles to be declared 'equivalent' to ours in safety terms – despite them falling way short. Why is the safety of US-market cars an issue? Following President Donald Trump's directive that America should sell more cars abroad, the US and EU are currently in negotiations. The US believes the EU's stricter vehicle safety rules are simply a form of trade protectionism. US ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland said: 'If we sell you a vegetable or a car or a product, if it's safe to use in the US it should be deemed safe to use in the EU.' Are US vehicles safe? 'When it comes to protecting pedestrians and everyone else outside of vehicles, the gap between crash standards in the US and Europe is an ocean wide,' James Nix, vehicles policy manager for pressure group Transport & Environment (T&E) said. Dudley Curtis from the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) added: 'One long-standing issue is the design of the front end of vehicles. In America you don't have a pedestrian protection requirement. We've had these since 2003.' What safety equipment do US cars lack? There's a host of safety equipment we take for granted that isn't compulsory on US-market cars. At the very basic level, seatbelt reminders have been compulsory in cars sold in Europe since 2019. In the US, they are only required for the driver's seat. The Biden administration wanted them all-round in 2026-27 but experts think that's now unlikely to happen. Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) has been hailed as the greatest safety advance since the seatbelt as it slows a car automatically if it detects an impending impact. Since 2022 it must be fitted to every new car sold in the EU (and the UK). The US was due to make it compulsory in 2029 but the ETSC says the Trump government has suspended that. Cars sold this side of the Atlantic since 2022 must also have intelligent speed adaptation. This uses cameras and GPS to encourage drivers to stick to speed limits. Again, it's not compulsory in the US. Neither is fatigue monitoring or emergency calling, which enables the car to automatically summon assistance if it detects a possible driver-incapacitating accident. Then there are the things we don't see. To get the top five-star Euro NCAP crash test rating, vehicles sold in the EU must pass stringent tests for the protection of occupants in frontal and side-impact collisions, whiplash prevention and safety assist features, as well as pedestrian safety. Equivalent testing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the US isn't as rigorous. 'For example, they don't use the latest [more sophisticated] generation of crash test dummies,' the director-general of Europe for the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), Laurianne Krid, pointed out. What is the problem with selling US-market vehicles here? As we've seen, simply saying a US car is as safe as a European one doesn't make it so. James Nix from T&E said: 'Particularly since the 2000s, Europe has made significant vehicle safety improvements that simply weren't mirrored in the US.' To maintain this improved safety standard, all manufacturers – whether from Europe, Korea, Japan, China or the US – must currently seek European type approval for their cars to sell them in large volumes here. There are concerns that giving in to the US would set a precedent for other countries. The ETSC's Curtis explained: 'We want to send a very clear message that this is a bad idea and will be a big mistake. We don't want to see the EU's world-leading vehicle safety standards undermined, because it's hard to see how that doesn't then undermine the whole system.' If the US gets its way, we might also see an influx of much larger vehicles. The FIA's Krid said: 'Most of the crash tests we do don't test the compatibility of smaller vehicles with much larger ones. Having larger vehicles coming to Europe isn't going to be great for road safety in general.' There's also the impact on infrastructure. Krid added: 'We do know the heavier the vehicles and the fewer the axles that weight is put on, the more damage there is to the infrastructure. So bringing in larger vehicles will have an impact on roads.' And the last thing we need is more potholes. Why aren't US vehicles as safe? Of course some US-made vehicles such as Teslas meet European type approval requirements, but they are the exception rather than the rule. The ETSC's Curtis explained: 'The US and Europe have two different regulatory systems. In the US, there's manufacturer self-certification before a car can be sold. Then there's a robust enforcement system run by [the] NHTSA. 'The European type approval system independently checks components, systems and the whole vehicle before it's allowed to be sold.' The result is that US roads are significantly less safe than Europe's. The ETSC says that since 2013, road deaths in the EU have decreased by 16 per cent. In the US over the same period, they have increased by 25 per cent. How likely is equivalency to happen? With the Trump government nothing is off the table. 'It's hard to second guess what the US strategy is,' said Curtis. The concern is it could be the thin end of a wedge that will see larger US vehicles coming in through a back door. Currently, if you want to fizz around Fulham in a monster Ford F-Series pick-up, you can buy one via the individual vehicle approval (IVA) loophole. Sales of giant Chevrolet Silverados sold in Europe through IVA went up by 513 per cent between 2022 and 2023. Safety experts want the IVA loophole closed. Krid warned: 'There is a genuine risk that some vehicles [deemed unsafe in Europe] might come through. That's what happens in negotiations. We want to limit the loopholes or whatever might arise from the trade agreement.' One thing is for sure, there are multiple reasons we should all be concerned about the prospect of car safety standards being diluted.
Forbes
01-04-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
Serious Traffic Injuries In Europe Worse Than Reported, Study Finds
Serious road injuries in Europe are 'massively' under reported. The lack of accurate data for the number of injuries that result from collisions and where and when they occur, are contributing factors for why most countries are failing to significantly improve road safety. Those are the main findings of a new report published on Monday by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), a Brussels-based independent non-profit organization. 'Every day, all over Europe, hundreds of people are seriously injured on our roads,' Jenny Carson, project manager at the safety council said in a statement. 'Policymakers underestimate both the scale of the problem and the impact that these injuries can have.' About 1,291,000 people are reported injured annually in the European Union, and some 141,000 of them are serious, based on estimates obtained from official sources, the safety group said. But those numbers may underestimate the true extent of the problem, it added, due to inconsistencies in data collection and sometimes massive under reporting by the police. According to the report, 'Reducing Serious Injuries on European Roads' most official statistics on traffic injuries in Europe are from police reports, but police often have no specific knowledge and can misjudge the severity of the injuries. In addition, while collisions involving motor vehicles are much more likely to be reported by police, officers are rarely at the scene of the vast majority of incidents involving pedestrians and cyclists when no motor vehicle was involved, and as a result, many go unreported. The report noted that while hospitals collect their own data on patients injured on the roads, they do not routinely collect information on where and when injuries occur, necessary information to identify high risk sites that need upgrades to prevent future incidents. Also, governments often struggle to combine information collected by hospitals with police statistics, which is essential to form a comprehensive picture of the scale of the problem. For example, the report cited that collision data collected in the Czech Republic indicated that the police database contained only 43% of the injuries recorded by the public health insurance system. And a study conducted in the Netherlands found that there were police reports for about 65% of people seriously injured in collisions when motor vehicles were involved, but only about 12% when there were no motor vehicles involved. Many countries in the European Union have incorporated serious injury reduction targets into their national road safety strategies, but this report highlights that progress in reducing injuries ' is lagging behind the reduction in road deaths.' To address the challenges and achieve a reduction in deaths and serious injuries, the report advocates for better governance and management so that leaders take responsibility, ensure transparency, guarantee funding, improve data collection, and develop partnerships. The study supports a "Safe System' or Vision Zero approach to road safety and design that takes human error into account, first put into effect in Sweden in the 1990s. The goal of the initiative is to eliminate all road deaths and serious injuries by creating multiple layers of protection, so if one fails, the others will create a safety net to lessen the impact of a crash. Improvements are designed to result in: safer people, safer roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds and better post-crash care. 'National governments,' Carson added, 'need to work harder to improve the flawed system of relying extensively on police-reported data which gives a misleading picture of the full burden of road injuries on individuals, societies and our economies.' To access the full report, click here.
