Shifting towards safer cars

The following is based on a presentation made by the author at The 7th ASEAN Automobile Safety Forum (AASF) hosted by the ASEAN New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and the Automobile Association of the Philippines (AAP).

There have been various safety initiatives undertaken by different organizations, industry leaders, and of course, the carmakers themselves. Unfortunately, for the regular car buyer all of this effort seems intangible until you put it in more relatable terms. This is a guide on how to pick a safer car.

But before going there, it’s good to establish where things stand right now.

The jeepney is often seen as a sign of Filipino ingenuity; ingenuity that rose from the ashes of World War II. The problem is it has stayed almost unchanged up to today. The design may look different, but the foundation—the one where jeepneys are built from surplus parts—remain the same.

And there lies the problem.

While the United Nations is working to harmonize vehicle standards, particularly with regards to emissions and safety regulations globally, the Philippine scenario is different. Though the country is not a participating country in the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations or WP.29, it has, at least, agreed to integrate vehicle standards with the rest of ASEAN starting two years ago. However, get to the details and it’s fairly basic.

The Philippines has failed to tackle standards such as occupant protection in the event of a crash (ASEAN R94 and R95 standards). As it is, the country’s safety standards remain rudimentary, opting to carry on with general road-worthiness and seatbelts.

So does it mean that safety doesn’t sell?

Thankfully, the answer is no. As car buyers become more informed about what’s available in other markets, so has their preference shifted towards safer cars. And though safety isn’t as visible as styling or performance, it has greatly become a deciding factor during a car purchase. This is especially true for younger and more tech-savvy buyers. In the Gen X or Gen Y age bracket, most of them are now starting their own families, explaining their preference for more safety features.

With this preference towards safer vehicles, just how do you pick the right one? Vehicle safety features are classified into two groups: Active Safety and Passive Safety.

Active Safety features is the more important of the two. They refer to a safety system that helps avoid crashes altogether. It starts looking out for its occupants not during a crash, but the moment they get into the vehicle.

It starts with ergonomics. Operating a car is complex, requiring coordination with the hands, eyes, ears, and feet. Because of this, the driver must feel at ease when driving. The car must offer a wide range of adjustments to the steering wheel, seats, and pedals. The instrumentation and controls must also be legible and easy to use.

Once the car is found to be ergonomic, the next factor is visibility. A safe car is the one that’s easy to see out of, whether it’s in the front, at the sides, or at the back. New technologies such as obstacle detection and cameras do help, but the driver shouldn’t be reliant on them.

Next, the vehicle must have predictable behavior. On the road, it must behave as the driver intends. There may be different kinds of vehicles out there from small hatchbacks to sports cars, but they must at least exhibit obedient steering, a solid chassis, and responsive brakes.

The final ingredient in Active Safety is the various electronic features often heard about. The basic one is Anti-Lock Brakes or ABS. They virtually eliminate the locking of wheels during a panic stop reducing the risk of crashes by as much as 35 percent.

From ABS, it moves to an alphabet soup of acronyms. The one that’s most effective is Electronic Stability Control or ESC. It’s known by many names in the auto industry, but whatever it’s called, it can reduce fatal crashes by as much as 33 percent. ESC acts as the “brain” of a car’s active safety features. It can control a car’s entire movement. Using sensors, it can regulate engine output and even selectively apply the brakes to keep the car in control.

In as much as a vehicle has all these Active Safety Features, sometimes a crash cannot be avoided. This is where Passive Safety comes in.

Unlike Active Safety features, which require driver intervention, Passive Safety features operate with no driver input. They activate automatically during a crash to lessen occupant injury and death. Passive Safety systems include seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, and the occupant safety cage.

The seatbelt is the Primary Restraint System. It has three uses. One, it reduces the force of impacts. Two, it keeps occupants positioned correctly for the other safety equipment to work. And third, it also prevents occupants from being ejected in a crash or when the vehicle rolls over.

Next, are the airbags or the Supplemental Restraint System. Meant to work with the seatbelts, airbags lessen impact-related injuries by absorbing some crash energy between the occupant and hard surfaces such as the dashboard or windshield.

Finally, there’s the crumple zone and the occupant safety cage. These two work hand-in-hand to keep impact energies away from the occupants. Crumple zones absorb crash energy by controlled deformation while the occupant safety cage keeps a survival space intact during a collision.

How Active Safety and Passive Safety features work together form the foundation of how organizations like the ASEAN NCAP or New Car Assessment Program rate new vehicles. Through various crash tests, vehicles are judged based on adult protection (on a scale of 0-5 stars) and child protection (on a scale of 0-100 percent).

It is worth noting though that these tests simulate a crash between two objects of similar mass and structure. This means that the ratings can only be meaningfully compared between cars of the same type and size. When crashing a smaller car against a bigger one, the laws of physics still prevail.

Still, that’s not to say that everyone should avoid small cars and go for large ones instead. As safety technology trickles down even to entry-level cars, they are safer now than they have ever been.

Even as Philippines legislation continues to lag behind in applying more stringent vehicle safety standards, there is a clear preference for safer cars. In this case, it’s not the government, but the buyer that has become the reason for the shift. They are demanding more safety technology than ever before and thankfully, the carmakers have begun responding.

A look at the available cars for sale reveals that 92 percent now have at least one airbag, 80 percent have ABS, and 61 percent have ESC. This is a considerable jump compared to a decade ago where only 79 percent have at least one airbag, 70 percent have ABS, and 42 percent have ESC. Moreover, this growth in the adoption of safety equipment isn’t just attributed to premium car brands. With more than four times the choices in the market today, the driving force of change is actually the mainstream brands.

The Philippine car buyer is becoming savvier. He or she has begun dictating that safety features be made integral. They seem to understand that if a car does a poor job of protecting you in a crash, then it has failed in its most important job as a vehicle.