This post is sponsored by TAC
W
henever I see on the news that someone died in a car crash, I always look for someone to blame. An inexperienced P-plater showing off to his friends, someone texting and not paying attention to the road or an idiot who decided to drive home from the pub after drinking all afternoon. It’s comforting to have someone to blame but sometimes car accidents happen and it’s not that simple.
Sometimes people die because their cars simply aren’t safe. Good drivers too.
Being a child of the 80s I spent my youth driving around in cars that were nothing more than death traps on wheels. My best mate had a baby poo coloured Toyota Corona that we called Colonel Mustard. The passenger seat wasn’t attached to the car so every time he slammed on the brakes I had to throw my arms out and push hard against the dashboard to stop my face going through the windshield. Super safe.
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This isn’t Colonel Mustard but this is pretty much what he looked like. Except that Colonel Mustard was driven by a 17 year old guy with frosted tips in his hair with a 16 year old girl wearing too much eyeliner in the passenger seat. Image.
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My first car cost $1000 and it was a green 1970s Ford Laser. I called her Chloe. My dad fixed her up beautifully and I happily drove her around for years until she went to the big scrap heap in the sky when she bit the dust in a five car pile up on Hayden Drive in Canberra. This was over 10 years ago now and my parents are utterly horrified that they let me drive around in such a shit heap, but that’s what you did back then. Cars were horrifically expensive and if you were a teenager, you simply drove around in a total rust bucket until you could afford a cooler car. Note that I said ‘cooler’ not ‘safer’.
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This is Chloe, my first ever car and that boof head driving is me at 17. My bestie Emily (pictured above) and I used to cruise around Tuggeranong and listen to Michael Jackson tapes because I didn’t have a CD player. So gangster.
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After my accident, where I walked away with nothing more than a little whiplash, I become an extraordinarily cautious driver and I upgraded to a safer car as soon as I could afford it… but that was 7 years ago and my humble little 2007 Hyundai Getz only has airbags in the way of safety features. I don’t drive much these days as I’m a city dweller but road tolls haunt me. I get very nervous around Christmas time and my heart stops whenever there’s an accident on the news in a suburb where my loved ones live.
I’ve teamed up with TAC to raise awareness about Autonomous Emergency Breaking. When the campaign first came my way, I was a little hesitant thinking it was a weird gimmicky thing but Mr Smaggle urged me to accept the campaign because he said ‘It’s the best freaking thing that’s ever happened to road safety.’
The TAC have a website How Safe Is Your Car? where you can log in and find out what star rating your car has. I did mine just then and my humble little 2007 Getz came up with a 1 star safety rating. Ouch.
Not everyone can afford to upgrade their car to one with a 5 star rating (me included) but it’s important to consider these things if you’re buying a new car or considering upgrading at some point in the future.
Autonomous Emergency Braking systems are actually just insanely amazing. Depending on the particular system you get they use scanners, lasers, cameras and radars to detect danger on the roads and will give a warning alarm if they can sense an oncoming collision. If the driver fails to respond, the system will intervene and brake the vehicle automatically. It’s perfect for those moments when panicked driver’s dart in front of you or there’s an erratic car up ahead and you can’t predict their next move.
What was your first car? Would even think about driving in it now? What’s the star rating for your current car?
This post was co-oordinated by The Remarkables Group