[imagesource: NCAP]

Recently, Volvo, touted as one of the safest cars in the world, decided to level up on their crash test game.

Instead of ramming cars into walls, they raised them roughly 100 feet in the air using cranes and then watched as they plummeted to the ground.

The idea was to imitate the impact of the most extreme kind of car crash and collect data, not only to improve the safety of their vehicles, but also to compile a report that rescue services could use to improve their response when called to the scene of an accident.

South Africa could learn a thing or two from Volvo, and South Africans appear to be far less worried about vehicle safety than motorists in other countries.

As TimesLIVE points out, the GWM Steed 5 bakkie was number nine in the top 10 on Car Magazine’s list of the best-selling bakkies, despite scoring an astonishingly low zero stars when it was crash tested recently with two other local cars at the Global New Car Assessment Programme’s (NCAP) facility in Munich.

“Alarmingly (the bakkie) demonstrated a high probability of life-threatening injury,” said Global NCAP and its #SaferCarsForAfrica partner, the Automobile Association (AA) of SA, on Thursday [December 3] when revealing the results of their fourth round of SA car crash tests.

It was tested alongside two other local cars, the Renault Kwid and Haval H1, which were each awarded a pathetic two safety stars out of a possible five. Both of their body shells were found to be “unstable”.

Let’s check out some of those crash tests.

NP300 Steed:

The Steed is not the first bakkie to receive a zero-rating. Back in 2018, the NCAP tested the Nissan NP300 “Hardbody” and came to the same conclusion – it’s not safe.

It was the fifth highest-selling bakkie in 2020.

Renault Kwid:

Haval H1:

A summary of the above:

Now imagine what would happen to those cars if they were drop tested from 100 feet in the air.

The National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications (NRCS), which falls under the department of trade & industry, has set the bar extremely low when it comes to safety specifications on new cars sold in South Africa, but they say they’re working on it.

There are currently no crash test facilities in the country, but local manufacturers have been urged to send their vehicles to NCAP to test. Little interest has been shown in this proposition.

Here’s AA South Africa CEO Willem Groenewald:

“Since the #SaferCarsforAfrica programme’s first results were launched in 2017, we’ve been calling for an improvement in the safety standards set by government,” he said…

“Action is needed, and needed now, because it’s about protecting South African citizens.”

The AA and NCAP put together a more comprehensive list of vehicle ratings:

Some surprisingly low ratings on a few very popular cars.

TimesLIVE goes into more detail about some of the specs missing on those low-rated cars, which you can read about here.

If you’re thinking of buying a new car, you can visit the AA website first to make sure that you aren’t driving a death trap.

[source:timeslive]