European auto makers woo customers with safer cars

Clive Bengtsson has survived several thousand serious car crashes since 1964 when he started working at Volvo.

Also known as Clive Alive, the slim rubber and metal dummy is one of about 50 mannequins used in crash tests at Volvo's headquarters in Torslanda, western Sweden, and is a symbol of the company's obsession with safety.

Until recently, Volvo - now a unit of Ford Motor Co - was alone among car makers in making safety a main plank of its marketing strategy.

But that has changed as events including a spate of deadly accidents involving Bridgestone-Firestone tyres and Ford have raised consumer awareness of safety issues. US federal regulators have linked rollover accidents involving Ford vehicles and Firestone tyres to 271 deaths and several hundred more injuries. Mercedes also knows the cost of safety. In 1997, it stopped production of its new tall A-Class car to make improvements after one flipped over when the driver swerved sharply in the so-called Elk Test. The Electronic Stability Programme, subsequently developed by Mercedes, is now a standard feature.

"At some point in the last decade, safety moved from being way out to being a mainstream selling point," said Karel Williams, an automotive researcher at Manchester University.

Initiatives such as the five-year-old New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP) which ranks cars according to crash test results have also helped to raise awareness, say experts. Apart from Volvo, the company which first fitted the now orthodox three-point safety belt as a standard feature in 1959, DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes unit and France's Renault have developed strong safety credentials in recent years. Renault even uses the top "five-star" rating given by NCAP to its Laguna car as a marketing tool.

However, with some 1.7 million injuries and more than 40,000 fatalities from road accidents per year in the European Union, consumer groups say the car makers still have their work cut out.

And no technology comes free. In an industry with wafer thin margins, any additional cost can tip the balance from profit to loss and customers' reluctance to pay a safety premium piles on the pressure, the car makers say. "We have the technology to make an extremely safe car, but the customer won't pay for it," said one Volvo engineer.

As Italy's Fiat has shown with its new mid-sized Stilo model, which may have had more success if it had sold at a lower specification and corresponding price, consumers are unwilling to pay for extra features, be they linked to comfort, the environment or safety.

Car makers decline to say how much they spend on safety technology, not least because it is an inherent part of the product design and development process.

"There is clearly a major investment in safety at the product development level and in facilities like crash centres, but because (the technology) is often buried in various specifications, it is very hard to determine how much is spent," said Steve Young, auto consultant at management consultancy AT Kearney.

He argues that many of the features are low cost additions to existing electronic systems, such as adaptive cruise control, which uses sensors to keep a safe distance from the preceding vehicle, and early warning systems. Such preventative devices, also being developed in braking assistance systems, are currently the focus of much work as they are believed to be one of the most effective ways of cutting the accident statistics.

DaimlerChrysler says studies show more than 90 per cent of car accidents could be avoided if drivers had been warned in time of the impending danger.

Suppliers also bear some of the brunt of the costs. Many suppliers, including Sweden's Autoliv, have worked closely with Volvo to develop a Safety Concept Car, for example. Meanwhile, the likes of Delphi Corporation, Bosch and Siemens VDO are investing in by-wire technology, which replaces physical connections with electrical connections.

"Many of the big steps, such as the move towards by-wire are being developed for other reasons anyway," notes Young.

By-wire technology, which eliminates the need for hydraulic systems in brakes and steering, results in vehicles with fewer parts, making them cleaner, lighter, simpler and safer.

By-wire engineering is already used in the aircraft industry but it will be several years before the technology is fully developed for cars, experts say.

Most experts agree that safety for car occupants has increased dramatically in the last few years, with seatbelts, airbags and improved visibility only the most obvious features.

Now consumer groups are turning to pedestrian protection. "Safety has to move from focusing on the occupant to the pedestrian," said Manchester University's Williams.

Car makers are currently working on the basis of a voluntary code, but ultimately the need may arise for European legislation on front-end design, say experts.

Lobby groups are seeking to force car makers across Europe to build in more room under the bonnet to take the impact of a body, to use more flexible materials and to remove bull-bars but consumers are even more reluctant to bear this burden.

"Consumers are to some extent prepared to pay to protect themselves but when it comes to paying for something outside the car, it is a different matter," Andrew Howard, head of Road Safety at the Britain's Automobile Association.

Only Honda, whose CR-V has the highest NCAP rating, has made significant progress in pedestrian safety, experts say.

"The trouble is, there is a limit to what you can do if a person, with a relatively light weight, hits a vehicle - which is much heavier - at speed," said AT Kearney's Young.

Compromises will always be necessary. Despite new light-weight, high-strength materials, the more heavily laden a car is with safety features, the worse it is for pedestrians - as well as the environment.