Think Again - Is Your Car Really Safe?
Sydney Morning Herald
Sunday August 21, 1988
Do you have mag wheels on your standard sedan, loose suitcases in the back of the station wagon, a dent in the radiator grille or a tow bar that you don't remove when not in use?
Then your car is one of 40 per cent of all cars on NSW roads in a"dangerous" condition.
The public's perception of "dangerous" condition may be of a car riddled with rust or with brakes that require pumping, but the experts warn that a dirty windscreen can be just as deadly.
A recent survey of 400 cars in Newcastle showed that more than 40 per cent were in a dangerous condition - and road safety experts say the survey reflects the condition of cars on NSW roads as a whole.
The National Safety Council of Australia, which conducted the survey, believes that roadworthiness requirements for registration of a car in NSW are adequate, but that the licensing of drivers is not.
The council's deputy director and author of the survey, Mr Laurie Nicholson, said the findings supported the conventional wisdom that 80 per cent of all the State's road crashes are the result of driver error or lack of basic vehicle maintenance.
"Every driver should undergo a pre-licence course to build up the positive attitudes necessary for proper road use," he said. "The problems we have with driving revolve around people's attitudes to general vehicle maintenance, courtesy and knowledge of the law."
To prove his point, Mr Nicholson walked along Pitt and Jamison Streets in Sydney's central business district with the Herald to show just how many dangerous cars are on the road.
Of 10 cars parked along Pitt Street between Bridge and Bond Streets, six -three of them station wagons - had loose articles on the back seat.
One Volvo wagon had parcels on the back seat as well as a rear compartment closely packed with plastic bags and a bunch of bananas.
"If you are travelling at 30 km/h and stop suddenly, those articles won't stop with you," Mr Nicholson said. "It's no good thinking because they are fairly closely packed they won't move about - the energies involved in a crash ensure they break free very easily.
"They'd keep going forward at the same speed and could knock your head off. If you want to carry solid objects in the car, belt them in."
Mr Nicholson said the design of station wagons was "inherently unsafe" in not dividing the storage area for goods from the passenger area.
He said commercial wagons often have a metal grid divider between the two areas and domestic vehicles should at the least have the divider as a design option.
"Hatchbacks have the same problem," he said. "It seems like an omission from the design specification to me."
Further along the street was a white Commodore with tyres that were too wide for its wheel guards. In loose gravel it would throw stones at passing vehicles rather than up into the wheel and mud guards.
Wear and tear on tyres is another problem many motorists ignore. More than 10 per cent of cars inspected in the Newcastle survey had worn tyres and several also had the risky combination of cross-ply and radial-ply tyres.
"It may happen when one car has a blowout and you borrow the spare tyre from the other family car without realising the tyres are different types," Mr Nicholson said. "The combination can seriously affect the way the car steers and brakes."
The tow bar on a Rover in Pitt Street should have been taken off after towing. In an accident where a car collided with the back of the Rover, the tow bar would go straight through the radiator grille and do $1,000 damage instead of $100, he said.
In Jamison Street there were cars with bald tyres, dirty windscreens, no left-hand rear-vision mirrors. The radiator grille on a Sigma which had been in a front-end accident had been buckled into a V-shape.
"The driver may see it as simple panel damage but the buckle would put the lights out of alignment and could push up lights on low beam into a high-beam position," he said.
© 1988 Sydney Morning Herald
