ZERO-STAR DEATHTRAPS: Why selling unsafe cars is still legal today
Automotive safety agencies like ANCAP purport to force carmakers to change, but there’s a problem when it comes to pressuring governments to act. Here’s why deadly cars can be failures, but still pass the test…
The so-called safety organisation known as ANCAP carries itself as a bastion of automotive evolution, forcing carmakers to change and embarrassing them when they don’t, which is only partly true.
What ANCAP fails to do is be properly independent, meaning it cannot hope to solve the fundamental problems orbiting new cars with poor safety credentials being offered for sale.
The focus of this report is in response to this ANCAP media release on December 14 >> in which ANCAP attempts to cover itself in self-affirming glory by calling out carmakers for putting on sale two undeniably unsafe shitboxes. These are them:
Having performed the basic crash tests at ANCAP’s local testing facility, the MG 5 and Mahindra Scorpio have scored zero stars in destructive crash tests where adult occupant protection is assessed.
You can download the full Mahindra Scorpio crash test technical report here >> and MG 5 crash test technical report here >> But in the event you don’t have time to read the jargon at length, here is a visual summary of some of the highlights for the MG 5, and P.S. Dummy colour codes: Green = GOOD; Yellow = ADEQUATE; Orange = MARGINAL; Brown = WEAK; Red = POOR. (Click to enlarge)
And it’s the same story for the Mahindra Scorpio, (click to enlarge):
And here’s what ANCAP said about these abysmal scores:
The MG 5 qualifies for two stars in child occupant protection and also in vulnerable road user protection, but it completely shat the bed in adult occupant protection, meaning - it's a death trap, basically. It’s also quite shit in its ADAS features; check out my dangerous ADAS full report here >> if you want to know more about how that works, or more correctly, how it doesn't work at all.
The MG 5 didn't even meet the one star minimum threshold for those last two safety rating pillars, adult protection and ADAS.
ANCAP ratings are the lowest threshold of course which are achieved in those four areas, in this case zero in the last two.
I'm not sure we can actually say that accurately or definitively at this point, because it's going to depend on how well or not they sell henceforth, and the data is not in yet.
As per usual though, Ms Hoorweg had more things to say about this anomoly.
There's a fundamental problem with all of this criticism of outdated safety tech and the very real, quite serious consequences for you, potentially, if you're in a crash and this is why.
ANCAP operates under this massive unseen conflict of interest, and it’s one of the reasons I have lost all respect for that organization. The reason they're allowed to sell such safety shitheaps in Australia today is that, for example, the MG 5 and the Mahindra Scorpio have passed all of the required regulatory tests - including the regulatory crash tests and they are thus eligible for homologation.
These vehicles comply with the ADRs (Australian Design Rules) and they're legal to sell once they do that. But ANCAP is not a regulatory agency, it's more of a curiosity. The reason there's a conflict of interest is that Hoorweg’s organization relies on taxpayer funding just to stay afloat.
ANCAP has only just recently reached under the table, so to speak, with the minister and secured the next tranche of taxpayer funding. You are paying them $16.3 million, because that's the ANCAP taxpayer funding between now and 2027-2028 financial year.
So this obviously effectively gags ANCAP from properly criticising the government over any vehicle safety policy deficiency and at the same time, ANCAP has no regulatory balls whatsoever. It cannot take a single unsafe shitbox out of play.
ANCAP is, however, allowed to manipulate carmakers into conforming to their unfounded and confusing protocols for the sake of dumping self-congratulatory praise upon themselves, like when the very safe Hyundai Palisade was unfairly rated at four stars >> Same thing happened to the Mitsubishi Express light commercial van rating >>
But even when they do fund the tests and highlight a certain vehicle’s deficiencies, they level the blame at the carmaker (which has merely complied with the regulations, remember) - instead of at the federal government whose anorexic safety standards are the reason these terrible zero-star vehicles are allowed to go on sale.
Do we blame the cows for getting through the fence, or the farmer who didn’t build the fence correctly?
Awesome, dude. But it's still quite legal to sell a zero star shitbox here in Australia. If that is a ‘solidified stance that boosts new vehicle safety’ then there is a diabolical misunderstanding going on here.
That last quote is from the $16.3 million ANCAP funding announcement dated November the 23rd, 2023 >> That's quite recent, really.
What this means is that the golden handcuffs are on ANCAP for the next five years. So ANCAP or Ms Hoorweg cannot come out at this point and state the incredibly obvious in the manner of a person who was objectively interested only in automotive safety, which is to label the regulatory standards that allow these kinds of safety shitboxes to be sold legally in this country are absolutely disgraceful.
This is your government doing the hair and makeup on everything that doesn't matter to real Australians out there, in the traffic. ANCAP won’t prosecute their safety arguments against the government for having not updated the appalling minimum standard for alleged ‘safety’.
Instead, ANCAP levels their criticism purely at carmakers who are merely complying with the the federal government stipulates is acceptable. The fact ANCAP doesn’t criticise these terrible standards makes them complicit, because we are all guilty of the good we fail to do.
ANCAP is happy to take credit for, or use to its benefit, the mandating of seatbelts, the introduction of airbags, the development of crumple zones and safety cell structures in modern vehicles - but they won’t take aim at the lax minimum safety standards that allow the MG 5 and Mahindra Scorpio to be sold legally in this country.
I would therefore argue that Ms Hoorweg needs to call on the government to lift its game. But however diplomatically she chose to do so, which would elevate the patently bad minimum standard for vehicle crashworthiness, would be an exercise in political suicide; goodbye funding.
And yet, if you really were an independent safety advocate, that's clearly the solution to this problem. If we simply prevent them from being sold because they don't comply any longer, because ANCAP forced the government to make the regulations ever-so-slightly stricter, that would be a solution to this problem ANCAP is laying squarely at the feet of carmakers.
Assistant infrastructure transport senator Carol Brown locks ANCAP into five years of misdirected criticism…
ANCAP behaves here more like an auxiliary road safety pundit. They're tut-tutting a bit, but not calling the government out for its inadequate approach to the management of minimum vehicle safety standards. The government's conduct here is properly slobbish too, especially when you look at the zeal they put into policing taxes, the roads, war crimes whistleblowers etc.
You will be treated like Hannibal Lector should you drive 10km/h over the limit, but at the same time regulatory ministerial clowns are letting as many of these safety heaps loose on the roads as MG and Mahindra can sell. But that's totally okay.
ANCAP is handling that by not handling it. This is a massive regulatory double standard.
The minister responsible here is Catherine King. She has a Bachelor of Arts in social work and she's been sucking enthusiastically on the public teat since 2004, very nearly two decades. You go, girl.
Time is it, I think, for Ms King to dedicate some time to regulate those unsafe shitheaps off the road by raising the minimum safety standards to be at least vaguely relevant to modern times.
Why is this impossible, seemingly? Why is it impossible to do and why is it impossible for ANCAP to suggest that it is by way of not doing their job?
If you buy an MG 5 or a Mahindra Scorpio and then crash, this bi-lateral zero-star fiasco highlights a giant steaming turd of regulatory deficiency which ANCAP, the ‘independent voice of road safety for Australia and New Zealand’ cannot criticise. Not unless it wants to bite the hand that feeds it…
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