Brum, please accept my condolences it must have been terrible.

These responses have given me a lot to think about when choosing another car.

Strangely enough, whilst reading throught the above contributions, my thoughts promptly were drawn to the Austin Metro (or any of it's variants)....and lo and behold someone mentioned it.

When reading, or in some other way considering, the safety of cars, the Metro often springs to mind because (a) it's only recently become a rarely seen car... i.e. it was a common sight on our roads up till thelast few years. And (b) achieved a very low NCAP rating. And (c) was one of the (numerous) cars I had first hand experience of when attending road traffic incidents/accidents.

And the consequences of the various Metros colliding with this or that always seemed to remind me at the time not to buy a Metro....the outcome was always a spectacularly bad one.

It serves to confirm in my mind that there was then - and is now - concrete evidence to link NCAP evidence with real life experience, so, whilst GB has a point (as always), I would maintain that reference to the NCAP tables has (at least in my own mind) tangible benefits that I am happy to take note of.

I wonder if the fact Metro's were often driven by young drivers was a reason why they were in many bad accidents?

It's a possibility but it was never my opinion that the Metro was primarily the transport of the young. I might be wrong but I'd have said they also had appeal to older people and mothers wanting a small runaround as well as youngsters.

I wasn't actually saying that there were lots of bad accidents involving Metros...more that it seemed a disproportionately high percentage of the ones I had anything to do with were more severely damaged relative to the other vehicle(s) involved and stood up very poorly to the impacts compared to other similar types of car. The NCAP video rather shows what I'm trying to say.

Probably no worse than a Trabant or a Reliant three wheeler though :-)

I can't help thinking that manufacturers simply design their cars to do well only in the NCAP tests. What happens in real life crashes, when angles of impact etc are different.

Many manufacturers have been found to be engineering their cars to well in the published fuel consumption figures, but then are totally different in real life conditions.

Are they up to the same tricks with safety design?

I think you are probably right. Most things nowadays are designed, driven mainly by marketing and brand image. Truth is often distorted when its convenient. Volkswagen and Dyson are prime examples in my mind.

I, for one, just took NCAPs star system at face value, i.e. 5 stars good, 4 stars not so good etc. Didnt really think about it any deeper until stated on this thread that its a vehicle class related award system, which in the real world where all vehicles coexist means far far less and certainly has misled me.

Yet how often do the tv adverts simply boast, "received the top 5 stars for safety" with no explanation of context.

I always thought that NCAP impact tests were done using an unyielding block of concrete or whatever. Therefore, every car is tested against a standard obstacle and not how it will fare if it hits another larger or smaller vehicle.

Think the clue is in the following text gleaned from the link below:

Star ratings cannot be compared directly between different categories of vehicles, so a ‘Best in Class’ is published showing which vehicles have performed better than their competitors.

www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/best-in-class-.../

Thats so sounds like marketing speak.

Surely real accident statistics say more.

Possibly but the point is, a 5 start rating for a supermini is not the same as a 5 start rating for a larger vehicle - in the real world.

So, in reality, this is a flawed system. The majority of the public dont appreciate the limitation, after all how many people read the small print, I certainly didnt.

If you look into the details, you will see that the tests are not independent of size. For example, the offset deformable barrier is set to mimic a crash into a vehicle of the same weight.

What I really wanted to know was how does a 5star rating from a decade ago compare to a 3 or 4 star rating today.

My particular conundrum is a 10 year old corolla verso or a Lodgy about 3 years old. (French prices, UK prices are utterly different)

As someone who rode motorbikes for many years. I look on even a one star car from umpteen years ago as being a whole lot safer than my bike was. You may be fretting over nothing in my opinion.

As other posters have said make sure you maintain your car and drive responsibly that's primary safety. Your concern is with secondary safety.

Your have to accept some risk in your life. Getting up in the morning is a risk eating your wheaty flakes in the morning carries some risk.

Edited by Ethan Edwards on 23/10/2016 at 21:58

A very perceptive post. I fully accept life itself is a risk. However, I prefer to control the ones I can - without it becoming ridiculous.