If you drive a cheap new car, it may be considered too unsafe for the US and EU
Some of SA’s biggest-selling cars are considered too unsafe to be sold in the US‚ EU countries‚ Australia or New Zealand. That’s because they don’t have electronic stability control — a computerised technology that improves a vehicle’s stability by detecting and countering skidding — which has been a legal requirement for new passenger cars in those countries for several years. Shockingly‚ several of SA’s cheapest cars do not even have antilock brakes or airbags. Yet despite the country having one of the highest car-accident fatality rates in the world – 14‚071 people were killed on our roads in 2016 — cars that don’t tick all the safety boxes are justified as being "an affordable alternative to public transport". The Automobile Association of SA (AA) recently released its second annual Entry-Level Car Safety Report‚ and with it the bombshell news that of the 25 cars selling for R160‚000 or less‚ only two are considered to have acceptable safety: the Toyota Aygo 1.0 and the Nissan M...
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