Euro NCAP to mandate auto-braking in new-car test

The idiot that buys a brand new car. Can't say that I've ever seen the value in a new car whatsoever.

And by the time it's on the secondhand market there will be YEARS of car where it's been compulsory, so cars will all have it after a certain time, and thus it will add £0 to the price that the secondhand buyer's willing to pay.

Depreciation with a car is a given. Similarly, I never paid any extra because my 1995 Mondeo has an air bag, electric windows or a larger engine. By the time a car hits the second hand market all the "compulsory" items are standard and you won't pay extra at all for them and all the fancy "extras" like stereos, electric windows, sunroof, etc. factor so little into the cost that it's not worth worrying about.

It's only the first-buyer who's silly enough to pay through the nose for those items in the first place, and absorb the cost of the car. Everyone after that profits purely from his acceptance of depreciation. In a few years, your car won't sell for more than a few grand. It's as simple as that. And even then, I'd consider that expensive.

Had my car for about 4 years now. 50mpg. Perfect running. Still going strong, still "empty" MOT certificates (last "problem" was a cracked windscreen washer bottle), still perfectly drivable. Cost me £300 when I bought it and I've spent about the same again on essential replacements (e.g. tyres). Hell, when the front windscreen caught a stone, I didn't bother to claim it on my insurance because it only cost £100 to get a full replacement with heating elements, fitted on my front lawn. And when someone scratches your door in a car park... meh, who cares?

Re: 2 words....

Peugeot!

Re: Hang on...

I didn't suggest that new-car-buyers weren't necessary. Hell, I've only ever owned second-hand.

I merely pointed out, to answer the question about who's going to PAY for this, that the only people who would pay for those extras are the new-car-buyers. By the time those cars filter to the second-hand car market, the "cost" of those extra parts would be a tiny percentage of a tiny amount of money in comparison.

That's the cost of buying a new car, that the next buyer will see all your fancy extras and expenses as nothing worth paying extra for. Hell, even if you go by *percentage*, the used-car-buyer probably pays even less a percentage of their overall purchase cost for such fancy addon's than the new-car-buyer did (i.e. if the extras cost 10% of the price of a new car, the second-hand buyer would almost certainly value them at less than 10% of the second-hand cost!).

Re: Safety enhancements are used as performance enhancements

It's generally agreed and proven that the best way to improve vehicle safety would be to mandate mounting a large spike in the centre of every steering wheel that would skewer the driver if they ever had an accident or brake too hard. It's a cast-iron guarantee that people with those cars would drive more slowly and more carefully and take all the harsh abuse of the cars steering/braking out of their daily commute.

Pulling a car down to having so little kinetic energy that it wouldn't kill a pedestrian is almost impossible. Even a bike can kill at 20+mph. You'd literally have to go back to little men walking in front of the car with a red flag, and even then it wouldn't be accident-free (fork-trucks are usually very low speed but can easily kill people if they back into them near a solid object - hey you can take an entire superstore out if you're not careful when loading the shelves with one at <5mph).

The better thing would be separation. Move the dangerous, fast-moving, heavy things away from the fragile items. Follow Belgium's example and put all the roads underground. Don't have "streets", have pedestrian areas and vehicle areas clearly separated and make the speed limit 5mph where the two meet.

But, some would argue, the riots involved in taking away current freedoms, changing EVERY road and every vehicle and every driving law would probably hurt more people than they would have saved in road safety.

Re: @Hmm..

As a biker you will of course be aware of all those wonderful ideas that come out of TRL such as predictive braking based on GPS saying you are approaching a bend too fast, not to mention that horrendous idea (which fortunately got quietly shelved) where they planned a chest-rest plate to stop bikers being thrown off the bike in a collision.

'Motorbikes are dangerous' say that statisticians so they get lots more safety improvements proposed than cars even if they are neither safe nor an improvement,

Re: I wonder what happens...

The car has an antilock braking system. This will limit the action of the brakes in the same way that it would if you slammed your foot on the pedal, and stop you from sliding.

But of course you'd never be in that situation because you'd be obeying the Highway Code's rules on stopping distance.

Just answering.....

Has been, since 2007, in the EU.

Re: That will be definitely ...

If you can afford a 40,000 Euro car, I'd assume you can afford the 300 Euros as a one-off expense one a year or so to keep it in check and passing the required tests, personally. If you can't.... well, that's a situation that you could have foreseen no matter what the problem was: "300 Euros for a new wing mirror?!". You also have it serviced, presumably by the manufacturer, but I'm assuming outside warranty?

That said, you've now left it for 2 years with that problem, so it's obviously not that much of a bugbear or you'd have fixed it.

This is why I stay away from THAT manufacturer, nothing to do with new or old. Hell, last time I helped out a neighbour, they wanted to sell you a £300 cable to provide a "normal" OBD-II socket out of the car because there's was non-standard.

Re: @gagaga

I've given up with the stealers as well, Audi told me the TT needed a new computer at a fitted cost of $2k, I thought at that price I'd get a second opinion and the very nice man who is now looks after my cars diagnosed a faulty connection that made it look to the automated test kit that the computer was shot. Repair cost of $500 if I wanted it done nicely with the new part from audi or $130 if he replaced the cable and put it back in himself. Given it was a 10 year old car repair cost of $130 plus a couple of packs of beer as a little thank you

Question for those who might know this, to work at the stealers do you need to know ANYTHING about the car or is the ability to plug in the self diagnosis kit enough? Are there skilled people back there that are not allowed to actually check and diagnose problems or do they just not care anymore?

Re: Unbelievable bunch of stoneage arseholes

Well said (except for the 'dispair' bit). And how many commentors actually read the NCAP article in question? I reckon none, given the ignorance of some of the comments on here.

Personally, I would like to see more of the details and statistics and think about it, rather than coming to a knee-jerk reaction approx. 8 seconds after reading a 300 word Reg article. I reckon that the folk at Euro NCAP have given it a lot more thought than *everyone* reading this article.