Channel 4 Dispatches Investigates the Safety of our Vehicles

Channel 4 Dispatches tonight (Monday 1st August) investigates the true safety of our vehicles and whether or not we can trust the car manufacturers. Following the car emissions scandal last year when some manufacturers admitted they manipulated the results of exhaust tests, reporter Morland Sanders investigates if we can trust manufacturers and testers with car safety.

With new evidence that some cars might not perform as well in real world crashes as their safety rating suggests, Dispatches asks: could more be done to protect drivers and passengers? He also looks at the recall system and finds that the discovery of a fault doesn't always mean an immediate recall.

Dispatches uncovered:
•  Volkswagen dealerships giving outdated and incorrect information regarding the Polo’s safety
•  ENCAP safety/crash ratings not marrying up with the impact of real life accidents
•  20,000 Jeep Cherokees in the UK with a potentially fatal flaw, which has existed since 1993.

Volkswagen:
Last year Volkswagen admitted to fiddling with the figures in relation to emissions. They were called to give evidence to MPs where they were questioned about their safety claims. Dispatches went to eight franchised VW dealerships across the UK to investigate further.
The current VW Polo was ENCAP five star rated when it was tested, but that was seven years ago and its rating has now expired. To achieve the same score in today’s more rigorous tests it would need to have more safety features installed.

The following conversation occurred in one of the garages:
Dealer: The Polos as standard have got a five out of five star safety rating from ENCAP.
Customer: OK.
Dealer: Which has all been tested?
Customer: Is that on the 16 plate and the 15?
Dealer: Yes, yeah. Cos they’re all model or the update version got done probably about late early 2014, so any one from there has got the five out of five one absolutely.

Out of the eight franchised dealerships we visited, six gave us incorrect information. We showed this footage to Steve Fowler, editor of Autoexpress magazine for the past five years, when watching the footage he reveals that the Polo wasn’t tested in 2014. “You’re trusting these people; you’re spending an awful lot of money. This is the second biggest purchase you’ll ever make and they are giving you wrong information. It’s like buying a house and someone saying no the road out there isn’t busy, it’s only the M25…”

When we told Volkswagen of our findings they said: “We recognize “the need to constantly improve the training … of our franchise dealer network in relation to communication of the latest safety developments …. And regret that the small number of dealer staff involved in this covert filming did not appropriately check and communicate that the five star rating of the Polo had expired. We will improve training.

ENCAP safety ratings vs real-life accident impact:
Unlike emissions, which are governed by European legislation, car safety has two checks. First a basic level of protection set by EU law, and then a more stringent set of tests called the European New Car Assessment Programme (ENCAP). But is there a difference between real life crashes and ENCAP crash tests?

Folksam, a Swedish insurance analyst, have examined car accidents in real life for the past 35 years. Folksam’s study looked at the details of more than 250 models involved in real accidents and found that in many cases they fared worse in a real accidents than their ENCAP star rating would suggest.

In America engineers at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found vehicles were passing the lab tests with flying colours – yet thousands of people were still dying or being seriously injured in head on crashes. Could the problem be a different type of crash that cars weren’t being tested for?

The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) introduced a test called the small overlap - smashing a car into a barrier that impacts just 25% of its front.

•  When the tests began they found nearly three quarters of the cars tested crumpled with potentially lethal consequences for the driver.
 Becky Mueller, Senior Research Engineer at IIHS tells the programme: “Manufacturers can do a variety of things to improve their performance in the small overlap test. Unfortunately in Europe they do not conduct a small overlap test yet – so improvements that are being made to vehicles in the US, we’re not certain that those same improvements are being made to European models.”

The small overlap test is not carried out by ENCAP.  The tests they do are focused on the driver’s side..

In America the IIHS has recently been looking at passenger safety and conducted a series of small overlap tests on the passenger side.  They found the Toyota Rav 4 had improved safety on the driver’s side but not the passengers’.

The IIHS said, “What we have here is the Toyota Rav 4, this vehicle is a good performer on driver’s side. We see some of the things added to the vehicle are here in the blue and yellow. They are structures that strengthen this front end and also provide some energy absorption. If look over here at the passenger side those blue and those yellow components are not here at all and you can see that the structure has collapsed in on the survival space of the passenger… it would be as simple as just bolting these components on over here and for reasons whether it be for fuel economy or cost savings some manufacturers are making the choice not to put those components on.”

Toyota told Dispatches, “The IIHS small overlap test goes beyond the US safety requirements. After it was first introduced in 2012 we took immediate steps to enhance performance on the driver’s side.

Because the front structures are not symmetrical… making changes on both sides would have required considerable redesign… and could not have been implemented as quickly. …We’ve incorporated enhancements on both for vehicles built on Toyota’s new platform.”

On the 25% overlap test ENCAP said… ”ENCAP performs tests where it can with the funds that it has. We believe the small overlap test is well suited to a short campaign to highlight the problem…it is fairly easy to resolve and most manufacturers have improved the performance of their vehicles very quickly.”

On the difference between their laboratory tests vs Folhsa's real world crash studies ENCAP said:
“EuroNCAP’s full scale crash tests represent situations in which people could be killed or seriously injured. ……. cars have many different sorts of accidents many of which would not be life-threatening. This can make real world data less relevant to the sorts of accidents that EuroNCAP is addressing. Good correlation has been found when severe and fatal accidents are looked at.”

Jeep Cherokee:
The Jeep Cherokee was a popular car back in the early 2000s, selling tens of thousands of vehicles on the forecourts. Despite looking like a safe car, a potentially fatal problem came to light. Former Chrysler Jeep engineer and chairman of Chrysler’s minivan safety team Paul Sheridan left the company over a dispute about safety.
He tells the programme: “The problem with the jeep vehicle is the rear mounted fuel tank, it’s made out of plastic, it’s behind the axel, it’s below the bumper, it’s completely unprotected from a collision. When the tank breaks and fuel leaks a fire occurs and the victims in the vehicle burn to death.”

An internal memo as far back as 1978 warned of risks associated with a rear mounted fuel tank. Yet the Jeep Cherokees started on the production line with this design from 1993.

• 75 people died in fuel tank fires and Chrysler refused a request from the US government to recall the cars.
• They issued a voluntary recall in 2013.
• Twelve months later the same recall hit UK shores for Grand Cherokees manufactured from 1993 to 1998 and Cherokees built between 2002 and 2007.
• More than 30,000 Jeeps with rear fitted fuel tanks were recalled here in the UK, but Dispatches have discovered around 20,000 of those with this potentially lethal flaw have yet to be fixed.
Chrysler say the vehicles are safe and that the most recent recall letter, in the UK, was sent on the 1st April 2016.
With our faith in some car manufacturers at a real low after the emissions scandal….and with the tests failing to address some crashes that could result in life changing consequences…Can you really trust your car to keep you safe?

HOW SAFE IS YOUR CAR? CHANNEL 4 DISPATCHES – Monday 1st August, 8pm, Channel 4
Reporter: Morland Sanders
Producer: Sarah Hey
Executive Producers: Steve Boulton and Mike Lewis