This post is sponsored by TAC
W
henever I see on the news that someone died in a car crash, I always look for someone to blame. An inexperienced P-plater showing off to his friends, someone texting and not paying attention to the road or an idiot who decided to drive home from the pub after drinking all afternoon. It’s comforting to have someone to blame but sometimes car accidents happen and it’s not that simple.
Sometimes people die because their cars simply aren’t safe. Good drivers too.
Being a child of the 80s I spent my youth driving around in cars that were nothing more than death traps on wheels. My best mate had a baby poo coloured Toyota Corona that we called Colonel Mustard. The passenger seat wasn’t attached to the car so every time he slammed on the brakes I had to throw my arms out and push hard against the dashboard to stop my face going through the windshield. Super safe.
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This isn’t Colonel Mustard but this is pretty much what he looked like. Except that Colonel Mustard was driven by a 17 year old guy with frosted tips in his hair with a 16 year old girl wearing too much eyeliner in the passenger seat. Image.
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My first car cost $1000 and it was a green 1970s Ford Laser. I called her Chloe. My dad fixed her up beautifully and I happily drove her around for years until she went to the big scrap heap in the sky when she bit the dust in a five car pile up on Hayden Drive in Canberra. This was over 10 years ago now and my parents are utterly horrified that they let me drive around in such a shit heap, but that’s what you did back then. Cars were horrifically expensive and if you were a teenager, you simply drove around in a total rust bucket until you could afford a cooler car. Note that I said ‘cooler’ not ‘safer’.
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This is Chloe, my first ever car and that boof head driving is me at 17. My bestie Emily (pictured above) and I used to cruise around Tuggeranong and listen to Michael Jackson tapes because I didn’t have a CD player. So gangster.
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After my accident, where I walked away with nothing more than a little whiplash, I become an extraordinarily cautious driver and I upgraded to a safer car as soon as I could afford it… but that was 7 years ago and my humble little 2007 Hyundai Getz only has airbags in the way of safety features. I don’t drive much these days as I’m a city dweller but road tolls haunt me. I get very nervous around Christmas time and my heart stops whenever there’s an accident on the news in a suburb where my loved ones live.
I’ve teamed up with TAC to raise awareness about Autonomous Emergency Breaking. When the campaign first came my way, I was a little hesitant thinking it was a weird gimmicky thing but Mr Smaggle urged me to accept the campaign because he said ‘It’s the best freaking thing that’s ever happened to road safety.’
The TAC have a website How Safe Is Your Car? where you can log in and find out what star rating your car has. I did mine just then and my humble little 2007 Getz came up with a 1 star safety rating. Ouch.
Not everyone can afford to upgrade their car to one with a 5 star rating (me included) but it’s important to consider these things if you’re buying a new car or considering upgrading at some point in the future.
Autonomous Emergency Braking systems are actually just insanely amazing. Depending on the particular system you get they use scanners, lasers, cameras and radars to detect danger on the roads and will give a warning alarm if they can sense an oncoming collision. If the driver fails to respond, the system will intervene and brake the vehicle automatically. It’s perfect for those moments when panicked driver’s dart in front of you or there’s an erratic car up ahead and you can’t predict their next move.
What was your first car? Would even think about driving in it now? What’s the star rating for your current car?
This post was co-oordinated by The Remarkables Group
42 Comments
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SONIA KLUGER FIVE STAR! BANG xx
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Seriously? Well done! I’m driving around in my little 1 star shite box. 🙂
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Good post. My first car is my current car – a VW Golf. 5 star safety rating, thank goodness (or rather, my husband for taking safety very seriously). When I was in primary school I did a project on road safety which entailed me reading 5 million brochures from the Road Safety Authority, which left me with a great dread of driving. I didn’t get my licence until I was 27, and then because we were living overseas for many years, didn’t have need of a car until we came back to Melbourne. At the age of 35 I had a full licence and unblemished driving record – because I hadn’t been driving at all! I never had P-plates. I took refresher driving lessons when I was pregnant with my first child and only started driving regularly when she was small. Pretty scary being a pseudo-P-plater with 2 kids in the backseat.
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Oh my goodness! I grew up in Canberra and if you didn’t get your driver’s license, you just couldn’t get anywhere. I have a friend who’s like 40 and he never got his drivers license. It must be such a difficult thing to learn to drive when you’re old enough to know how dangerous it is. It’s so easy when you’re dumb and young! 🙂
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4 star, yessssss. My first car was a Mitsubishi Magna – 2 stars apparently but I felt pretty safe driving it around. I had airbags at least (my parents insisted).
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I felt pretty safe in my car until it got the 1 star rating! It has airbags though so that’s not too terrible. I also only city drive so I rarely go fast enough to have a proper accident.
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My first car was a 1991 white Mitsubishi Lancer (also with a cassette player) and I loved driving around in that thing. The freedom! The fact my dad used to wash it and fill it with petrol for me! And pay my rego! Those were the glory days.
Just checked our current car’s safety rating – 5 stars, woo hoo!-
Good girl! My dad used to wash my car too and make sure it had oil. And now Mr Smaggle does that for me. 🙂
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I have had a phobia of cars since birth. As a kid it took a lot of coaxing to overcome my fear of being in the car – I would sit there with my eyes clamped shut in a fetal position and would have to be put in kicking and screaming (talking ages 6 – 10 here). A bit of a Rainman, I know. It took years for me not to freak out about going in the car because I was so convinced I was going to die! I’m guessing that I died in a 10 car pile up in a past life? I have never sat my Ls either and don’t plan on it – the thought of driving thoroughly terrifies me. These days I am generally pretty okay with being in the car but I freak out at the slightest thing and hyperventilate over nothing. I used to never want to sit in the front seat and would only sit in the back because I felt there was a less likely chance of dying sitting in the back. I’m also a bit of a car Nazi. No one is allowed to even touch their phone while driving if I’m in the car – and don’t even think about speeding. We got a new car last week and I don’t have a clue about what brand it is but now I’m desperate to know if its one of the safe ones.
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Well definitely use the safety link in the article! I’m quite horrified by how unsafe my car is… considering replaceing it actually after doing this article.
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My first car was a 1991 BMW M5. It was a hand-me-down from my father after he bought a new car for himself in 2002. Handing the keys of a 320 horsepower rear wheel drive car with only an airbag and antilock brakes to an 18 year old was not the wisest decision in the world. I crashed it fairly quickly, and learned a good lesson along the way. My current car, a 2002 Mercedes E55 AMG is rated 5-star by the website. It’s loaded to the gills with every safety acronym available, but fuel consumption of 12liters/100km is a bit on the high side – it costs a bloody fortune to operate. Still though, it’s worth it. I live in Los Angeles, and driving is a way of life out here. You spend so much time in your car that it better be a nice place to be – it’s a quantitative improvement in your quality of life to have a nice car.
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I think that everyone needs a semi-serious non-fatal car accident when they first start to drive. It sounds really harsh but young people need to know that they aren’t invincible.
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I got my first car in 2000, Lily, a 1984 Ford Laser, Red because it goes faster, the ratio of car to rust was probably 50/50. I got a CD player installed which i used to drown out the mysterious sounds coming from the engine. We went on many road trips and relocated across states, when the time came for her to go to the wreckers i was given $50 in return which i used to buy a pair of Levi’s, fair trade i guess.
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Oh my lord I love that story! I used to use music to drown out the sound of my weird enginge noises too… still do actually! 🙂
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my first car was an ’88 Honda accord but it was cool as it had pop up headlights and a sun roof. I would hate to check the safety rating though. We don’t have a car now as we’re in the city but this is great to know for when we get one.
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Mine had a sunroof! I don’t even think my laser would qualify for a safety rating. I’m considering ditching my car. We have 2 and it’s not practical.
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My first care was a datsun 180B mustard coloured with white vinyl roof, thankyou very much.
My second car was a Holden Astra. Pretty good, had ABS.
My current car is a Hyundai i30, five star ANCAP.-
Well done! Everyone has such grown up and safe cars! I feel like such a teenager!
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I have an 06 Nissan Murano that according to the website is not yet rated but apparently some of Muriel’s features suggest I’m likely to have a safe-ish car. I shudder to think what my first car Harry’s rating would have been – he was an old Excel (like late 80’s) that my parents convinced me to buy off a mechanic we didn’t know because “at least we know it will run well” (or had been dodged up to appear like it ran well….)
I actually genuinely wish that safety features like this AEB thing were mandatory – it’s so sad that the technology exists yet on so many cars they are the “premium” options. I’d happily pay a bit extra on say my rego or something if there was some way for everyone to be able to have these things installed on their cars. It’s obviously a pipe dream that may not even be technologically feasible but still.
In September last year, my partner and I were both driving in separate cars from Townsville to the Atherton Tablelands (about 350km). Nick got cut off overtaking and ended up rolling his Hilux when he swerved to miss the other driver who’d come screaming up from about four cars behind him. I saw it all in my rearview mirror and it was probably only about 3 minutes from when he crashed to when I’d stopped the car, turned around and run back to the crash site but it was the longest period of my life. Somehow, he survived uninjured and was walking around assessing the damage (it was significant, the ute & his motorbike he’d been transporting on the back were both written off). Anyway, in a small world moment we actually knew one of the attending police officers from my dad’s fireman days in The Whitsundays and the cop was on the phone to Dad (as you do) and saying how lucky it was that he’d crashed in that particular spot because if it had been a couple of hundred metres up the road the deep ravines and creek beds could have made it an even more dangerous situation.
I asked Nick while we were driving after the tow truck left if they know for example, how the terrain on the side of the road can impact a crash’s outcome, why they don’t fill in all the ridges and dips and stuff and make the ground more level if that’s safer to crash on and he pointed out the cost that would be associated with something like that.
Anyway, I’ve gone off topic and written a novel but I’m glad you did this post. Before the accident, deadset my biggest consideration in purchasing a car was that it had cupholders and steering wheel volume controls. We only bought Muriel in August last year and Nick was ringing me to talk about all these cars he was looking at that had blah blah features and I was all “Yes but what colour? How many cupholders?” whereas if we were buying the car today after seeing that crash and how in the blink of an eye I could have lost everything important to me, safety features would be something I’d take so much more seriously.
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PS – I can’t tell that story without saying that as much as I hate them most of the time, sometimes people rock. Huge props to the mother & learner driver daughter who were behind Nick and stopped (+1) and then offered to either drive us back to my parent’s place or let us stay at their place overnight if we didn’t feel like driving that afternoon (+2345808520358 points). We didn’t take them up on the offer but it was so nice of them to suggest.
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Oh my god that sounds like a nightmare. I honestly think I would jut freeze from fear if I saw Mr Smaggle get in an accident. It was bad enough when we first started dating (8 years ago) we went to the movies and he drove off on his motorbike, I turned around and walked off and he got hit by a car. Thankfully I missed it but seeing his bike all crumpled and seeing his shoes and clothes torn to shreds still gives me nightmares. The woman who hit him didn’t see him and just slammed right into his side. I know what you mean about the kindness of people – there was a biker funeral at the church across the road and about 50 Harley Davidson riders saw the collision and just silently formed this wall of support behind Mr Smags while the police figured out what went wrong. The were so lovley and one them took his bike and fixed it for him. Bless.
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Still driving my first car! 97 pulsar with a one star rating. I have known this for a while and want to update but $$$.
Every time I brake urgently I think about my lack of airbags…-
Well that’s not fair, I have airbags and I’ve only got a 1 star rating. I drive like a total grandma and I’m hyper vigilent on the road. Not that that will save me but I spend a lot of time in the car thinking about how I might die. Morbid but effective.
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Great post Carly! Such an important message. My husband drives my first car now, just to and from the train station. It’s an 97 Holden Astra and has served us well but we are looking to upgrade. Thanks for the link to that website with the safety ratings. It’s so important to consider these things because we really do spend so much time in the car.
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It’s also not really an excuse these days because cars are so well priced. I paid $11,000 for my Getz 8 years ago and now I could get something AMAZINGLY safe for that amount of money.
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Wow, very interesting article! I have seen the ads for the Autonomous Emergency Braking system by the TAC, and found it really interesting. I have certainly seen many near-misses, and definitely think that an AEB systems is worth investigating.
One of my cousins died in a car accident when I was in high school, and although he was doing everything wrong at the time (no seatbelt, driving too fast, had been drinking, and was very emotional) it gave me a real fear of driving. Although I have my L’s, I’ve actually had to renew them – and they last for 10 years! I’ll get there one day. I think I’ll need professional help though, and I’ll certainly do it without telling my family – too much pressure there!-
I’m definitely not a comfortable driver. I’m very aware if you know what I mean? If I never had to drive again, I honestly wouldn’t care.
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My first car is my current car, a 2002 toyota corolla and I’m pleasantly surprised that is has a safety rating of 3! But hopefully I’ll be able to upgrade to a futuristic magical car that breaks for me one day, insanely cool.
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Mr Smaggle’s car is like that. It’s Smart Roadster and has a roll cage. I would love a crumple car. So worth it.
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We have a Lancer and an XR6, both of which have 5 star safety ratings. Guv however is a motorcyclist and I am never relaxed until he’s home again in one piece. He’s in all the gear, all the time, regardless of the weather but that still wouldn’t help that much if he was hit. He rides defensively and is a good rider, having been riding for over 25 years but car drivers are the problem over here in the West, they are diabolical.
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Urgh my man is motorcyclist too and it freaks me out. Thank fully he doesn’t have a motorbike right now but I’m terrified of the day when he gets a new one! :0(
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HR wagon. Loved her to pieces. I still have my second HR wagon – she’s in laid up mode being rebuilt as a street machine. Pleased to report Cholmondley (VW Caddy) has 4 stars.
If you can’t afford anything else, make sure you have good tyres with road grip and look after your brakes….
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I do! I just put my car in for a service and had her all fixed up. She’s good as new!
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My first car was a Hyundai Getz actually… and my second car was Getz too, the newer model. I have since then downgraded considerably, and now have a Toyota Carina that’s not even featured on that website — presumably because it’s 28 years old. 1986, baby. Safety thoughts cross my mind every day, but this is the only thing I can afford right now. I don’t drive often, but accidents in public transport happen so regularly here (unless we’re talking about trolleys, and these don’t go everywhere), I really have no idea what is safer.
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I LOVE my little Getz. It’s driven me half way around Australia several times and runs on the smell of an oily rag!
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Reading all the comments it appears the problem is not what your car has or has not but the lack of driving skills, your capabilities and confidence is the problem.
i grew up and learned on cars with non existant brakes and steering, well what steering and come to think of it what brakes.
But having driven and learned on those type of cars i have a greater respect and understanding of what I and my car is capable of.
no point in having a car with all safety features if you still cant drive properly, not confident enough to drive a shopping trolley or super confident driver with baseball cap on backwards Mr cool dude type who thinks he is an expert now that he has his P plates. Little does cool dude realise the car is doing the work for his lack of skills. -
I have to say safety features are huge and you never know when you are going to need them. My parents were recently in a serious accident. My dad (70) has been driving since he was… Well let’s say he’s been driving for close to sixty years and has been one of the best drivers I know. The guy coming the other way was of a similar age to Dad and eyewitnesses say was driving quite sensibly. Traffic was heavy in both directions and was moving at about 70kph both ways in a 100 zone. The guy coming the other way went into cardiac arrest and crossed the centre line plowing into my parents car. My dad has now been in critical condition in ICU for 51 days… My mum is home now and recovering well.
My mum wants me to help her buy a new car. Guess what will be at the top of my must have list?
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my first car was a 69 holden kingswood i had done up when i was 19 in 1999 and they cost $500 back then, i loved it very much it was a 253 4 on the floor and lsd nine inch in the rear, but as far as safety goes i was shit scared of it at speeds of over 100km/h. these days i drive a 2015 yaris and i take safety serious i hate seeing p platers driving cars that shouldnt be in their hands they need all the latest safety as to not become a statistic. and they dont need over powered cars. the first night in the hk i lost control 3 times luckily i didnt smash it. at 21 i had a head on accident a 89 year old man went through a red light while i was tuning right in the hk and i was lucky i only had whiplash. sometimes i think in australia we are to lax on safety compared to countries like germany where u need to take defensive driving before getting anywhere near a car
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how safe is my jeep compass 2013
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its amazing that no one yet has mentioned this, that while this feature sounds good at face value, it is almost guaranteed to INCREASE accidents, at the very least minor ones, random braking that you don’t and can’t control will lead to unnatural responses, ie the computer brakes differently to a real thinking person. Increasing the likely-hood of rear-end collisions. And thats when the system is working correctly, god help us road users should it brake by accident @100-110 km/h. Even with acceptable lead distance, random and unexpected slamming of brakes at that speed is a recipe for disaster.
Computers should NEVER replace the drivers brain, with all its training and experience.
The real answer is putting all that money for amazing technologies into real driver training, including high speed avoidance and crash recover techniques.
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