How safe are new cars sold in the EU? A new report from ETSC is now available!
Vehicle safety innovations are still benefitting too few road users in Europe due to an over-reliance on a voluntary testing programme rather than regulatory standards, according to a report by ETSC published last month.
In 2014 in Europe 25,964 people died in road traffic and 203,500 were seriously injured. However, the long term safety trend has been positive, especially so for car occupants who have benefitted more than other road users from road safety measures adopted over the past decade. There were 12,345 car occupant deaths in Europe in 2012 compared with 27,700 in 2001, a cut of 55%. Other road user deaths fell by 41% over the same period.
Improvements in the safety of new vehicles in Europe have been driven by mandatory EU and UNECE safety requirements for new vehicles and by Euro NCAP (the European New Car Assessment Programme), a voluntary consumer testing organisation that carries out its own tests of many vehicles that sell in large numbers and awards safety ratings to them.
For more information, please read the full report avaialable on the ETSC website
