Improving the safety of the light vehicle fleet

• Since 2000, the safety of our light vehicle fleet has improved by four percent each year as safer vehicles have replaced less safe ones.
• The average age of our light vehicles is 12 years which means the road safety gains are much less than other countries are obtaining.

How can we improve the safety of our light vehicles?

Promote advanced vehicle safety systems
The government could provide consumers with more safety information. Incentives such as lower insurance premiums for safer vehicles could be developed. Motor vehicle dealers could give buyers safety information when they buy vehicles (this could be optional or mandatory).

Reduce the average age of the light vehicle fleet
As well as promoting safer vehicles we could also provide incentives (eg scrappage schemes), or restrict the entry of older vehicles. For example, we could only allow cars eight years old or less to be imported.

Make electronic stability control (ESC) compulsory on all new vehicles entering the fleet by a particular date
Promotional activities will increase the uptake of ESC over the next decade, but we could also make it compulsory for all new light vehicles entering the country to have ESC fitted as standard by a particular date.

Revise WoF standards to ensure that advanced vehicle safety systems continue to function for at least the design life of the vehicle
We could strengthen the WoF inspection to make sure that advanced vehicle safety features are working properly.

Download the full section on areas of medium concern (PDF v7.0, 503kb)