MOTORING; A crash course in safety

Cocooned in our reinforced cars, we drivers think we're in control. But feeling safer may make us more dangerous, reports Phil Dourado

THERE are some things in life most of us choose not to focus on, because they don't bear too much scrutiny. How much you will actually repay on a 25-year mortgage is one. Whether you are doing the sensible thing by hurtling along at 70mph in a ton of crushable metal, surrounded by people doing the same thing in their own metal cocoons, is another.

Car advertising now suggests that driving is getting safer. Gone is the emphasis on speed and power. Airbags balloon out at you from every TV commercial and poster hoarding. Rigid safety cages and roll-bars loom reassuringly in the imagery.

In the case of one TV commercial, the apparent message is that you can talk to a camera with a smug grin on your face, catch a music cassette that is flying through the air in slow motion and slip it into your shirt pocket for safe keeping; and all this while out of the corner of your eye and centimetres away from your face, the side of your car is being stoved in by an HGV.

But research from the Consumers' Association reminds us that the fundamental problem is unchanged - even with the new features, cars are not designed to sustain crashes at the speed at which we drive them. And this doesn't mean great speed.

"Even at 35 mph many of the 'adults' were badly injured. Some drivers were 'hurt' when airbags didn't inflate quickly enough; some had feet and legs mangled in buckled foot wells, and others were crushed by luggage bursting in from the boot," said the CA's researcher, James Roberts, on tests carried out on new small cars equipped with airbags and side protection beams. On this occasion, the "drivers" were test dummies.

Secondary safety measures do help protect the driver, but the effect is more marginal than car makers' ads would have us believe. The big question is whether these new features simply displace risk by making life more dangerous for other road users.

In some cases the effect is purely unintentional, as anyone can testify who has been confronted by an amiable Volvo owner, bemused at having crushed your front left wing while sustaining minor scratching to a bumper. In other cases, the intention is overt, as with the steel bull bars which the Independent on Sunday has been campaigning to have banned. The explicit purpose of these bars is to transfer the impact of a crash to the other vehicle.

And there's the rub. What makes you safer may make others less safe. It may even make you drive more dangerously, a process known as "risk compensation". "Drivers change their driving habits to take account of the perceived extra safety," points out Dr John Adams of University College, London, whose new book, Risk, dissects the myths surrounding driving and safety. Adams cites evidence including studies of how drivers corner. Those with studded tyres used the extra traction on snow-covered roads to corner faster. The extra margin of safety delivered by the wheel studs was absorbed as extra speed.

Big cars generate most momentum. So, in a smash with a smaller car, the big-car driver tends to come off better. Depart-ment of Transport figures show that drivers of large cars are 27 per cent better protected than the average, while drivers of small cars are 14 per cent more vulnerable. Combine this fact with the loading of secondary safety systems on to more expensive large cars and the problem is compounded. "There is clear evidence that people in big cars with a lot of protection do indeed put people outside those cars at greater risk. It enhances a sense of perceived invulnerability," concludes Adams.

Frank McKenna, professor of psychology at Reading University, was the scientific advisor to the BBC's Drive series. "We narrowed down the causes of perceived invulnerability from possibles such as unrealistic optimism to what seems to be the root cause - an illusion of control," he said. "Drivers feel they have more control over their environment than they actually do."

The notion of control that car makers can promote even extends to the air that drivers breathe, with Vauxhall and others offering pollen-removing filters as standard. The implication is that the air in your capsule is better than the air "out there". But this is a clear example of the polluter not realising they are also the polluted. Greenpeace carried out research showing that car users travel "in a tunnel of pollution" that extends several feet above each road. The studies suggested drivers and passengers are exposed to higher levels of pollutants such as benzene, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide than pedestrians and cyclists. "Vehicles offer little or no protection against the pollutants generated by vehicle traffic," concluded the research.

The immediate danger, however, is crashing. McKenna points out that the design of vehicles themselves denies drivers access to the real experience of danger. "The wind in your face, abrupt movements up and down, noise and so on are designed out in modern cars." Drive along the motorway with the window open for a few seconds and you can appreciate what he means.

"I've no objection to secondary safety measures that design into a car the ability to withstand some crashes," says McKenna. "But it won't reduce the number of collisions. To do that we need to re-introduce the danger cues that vehicle design denies us."

Adams highlights how putting danger "front of mind" makes for fewer collisions. "In Sweden, they were petrified that the overnight switch from driving on the left to driving on the right would lead to carnage. But that month saw a plunge in the accident figures. After a few months, the figures were back up and they had returned to their old ways of killing each other." While drivers felt at risk, they drove in a way that cut the accident rate.

Adams takes risk-compensation theory to its logical conclusion, questioning the value of seat-belt wearing in the overall casualty figures (taking into account other road users as well). The Department of Transport dismisses this line of thought. "Not risk-compensation theory again!" moaned a spokeswoman.

As with all statistics, the DoT's can say what you can read into them: 3,814 people died in crashes in 1993, down below 4,000 for the first time. "We have casualty reduction targets to achieve, and the figures are coming down," said the spokeswoman. But, for some, the real story is in what the figures leave out.

The Pedestrians' Association's contention is that the relatively low death toll is not a reflection of the decrease in danger, more of the withdrawal of potential victims from the roads. "Seeing the car as an extension of your private space, one in which you feel safe and protected, only adds to the King of the Road attitude that downgrades pedestrians, cyclists and other road users. As a result, they stay off the road," said Faith Lawson, chairman of the Pedestrians' Association.

Her point is backed up by Dr Adams. "In 1922, twice as many children were killed on the road as today. Apply the Department of Transport's use of statistics and that means the roads are twice as safe. Apply common sense based on your own experience and you know that's not the case," said Adams. "What's actually happened is that the roads are so dangerous for children on foot that parents have withdrawn them from the danger."

"Twenty years ago, 80 per cent of seven- and eight-year-olds walked to school. The figure is now 10 per cent," pointed out Lynn Sloman, assistant director of the pressure group Transport 2000. "This common perception that the roads are getting safer doesn't really stand up to close analysis. We've all modified our behaviour in the face of increased danger." Despite the wholesale removal of potential targets, the UK still has one of the highest child pedestrian casualty rates in Europe.

As for the future, car makers from Mercedes to Jaguar are working on the next generation of safety features: radar-like systems that warn you if you are too close to the car in front and tell you if it is safe to overtake. But being safe is about how we drive rather than secondary safety measures loaded on to cars. After all, the introduction of airbags was followed by a spate of reports of joy riders crashing on purpose to inflate them. And even ram- raiders wear seat belts. That doesn't make them safe drivers. !

CARS OFFERING MOST AND LEAST PROTECTION

Best

Worst

Best

Worst

Best

Worst

Best

Worst

SUPERMINIS

Fiat Punto with twin airbags Feb 95*

Citron 2CV Feb 87

SMALL FAMILY CARS

Vauxhall Astra Estate (driver airbag) Jan 95

Skoda Favorit Estate Jan 95

LARGE FAMILY CARS

Ford Mondeo (driver airbag) Oct 94

Citron BX April 87

EXECUTIVE CARS

Volvo 850 Jan 94

Hyundai Sonata Oct 90

*Refers to date of safety assessment.