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2 Nov 22 ANCAP: Remembering the significant contribution of ANCAP’s inaugural CEO, Nicholas Clarke - Sad news. Nick was an absolute inspiration to the team that he led at ANCAP. The contribution to road safety during this time is decribed in this 2015 ESV paper.

Tips to save a life
  1. Get an intelligent speed assistance device, such as some brands of sat-nav or a smart phone app (e.g. Metroview also Play), to help you drivewithin  the speed limits - exceeding the speed limit by just a few km/h greatly increases the risk of a serious crash. Pay-How-You-Drive car insurance rewards drivers  who obey speed limits.
  2. If your car has cruise control with a speed limiter function try using the speed limiter to drive at a constant, chosen speed on open roads. It is much safer than cruise control, which requires driver intervention in order to slow the vehicle. The speed limiter function requires driver intervention (simply pressing the "cancel" button or flooring the accelerator) to exceed the selected speed - to slow down you just lift your foot off the accelerator as normal.
  3. Choose ANCAP 5-star vehicles for the whole family, particularly young drivers - avoid vehicles with 3 stars or less and look for cars with 6 or more airbags that give good protection in side impact crashes. Many models marketed between 2005 and 2015 only had 6 or more airbags on more expensive variants so look for these when buying a used car (optional safety equipment is not evident in Used Car Safety Ratings)
  4. In Australia, never use parking lights on a moving vehicle. If you think you need lights on to make your vehicle more conspicuous during the day then switch on low-beam headlights or, better still, install daytime running lights. Similarly, don't use fog lights except when there is fog.
  5. There is no substitute for adult supervision of children walking/playing in the vicinity of moving vehicles (e.g. driveways and parking lots). Reversing devices such as a camera can help avoid a tragedy but they are far from 100% effective. 
  6. Keep children in a dedicated child restraint (with built-in 6-point harness) for as long as possible but at least until their 4th birthday. A booster seat should be used until they are at least 7. This is now law in many Australian states. Look for shoulder height markers in Australian child restraints.
  7. On country roads, if you drop one wheel off the edge of the tar, slow down gradually (gentle braking is OK) and carefully drive back onto the tar when the speed has reduced. A sudden attempt to get back onto the tar at high speed often leads to a rollover crash.
  8. Engage "Do Not Disturb While Driving" on your phone


Publication Notes

No glitz,  hype or ads!  This page is designed for easy and quick updating by me and fast loading by you.

Broken links? There are hundreds of links on these pages, some dating back to the 1990s. Unfortunately there seem to be hundreds of reasons why IT departments want to change webpage addresses. My apologies if links no longer work.

June 2008: Most links moved to a new page to reduce page sizes.

April 2012: Apple is suspending its Mobile Me service so I have had to move files to a new server. The links below should now point to the new server.

Feb 2024: These web pages now use SSL security so you should no longer receive "not secure" warnings. Please update your bookmark to change http to https.




Each of these vehicle-safety initiatives has the potential to markedly reduce casualties in relevant accidents.  Graphs are from several conference presentations.
curtain benefits 

Automotive Safety News
Green Automotive News (see also Electric Vehicles)
Earlier road safety news

 
 

Earlier Green News.

Safety News Links


Green News Links

PDFs of conference papers (with co-authors) and presentations (see also ESV papers)

* Note: not necessarily current ANCAP policy

International Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV) - updated links to PDFs at NHTSA

Update 2024: Some links have changed again. Some of the earlier conference lists of papers use javascript to load the PDFs. I have tried to bypass this in the links below. For some the PDF files download instead of opening in the browser. I have also provided links to each conference, in case the links to papers don't work.


Last update ... see news. Started by Michael Paine (email: mpainesyd!gmail.com (replace ! with @) in 1997 - apologies for broken links after nearly three decades!