Safer Cars for Latin America – The campaign so far

Roundtable participants, including the Vice-Minister for the Environment, Transport Minister, representatives from the State Consumer Protection Agency, AA Peru, ASPEC, CI and El Poder.

Since early 2016, the Bloomberg Philanthropies car safety team at Consumers International (CI) has been working in partnership with consumer groups across Latin America on a regional campaign for safer cars. From our initial campaign planning workshop in Santiago in January, to our recent campaign report launch in Lima, great strides have been made to pressure Latin American governments to tighten up car safety regulation, call out manufacturers for applying double standards on safety, and to raise awareness amongst consumers.

What is the problem?

Each year 1.25 million people die on the roads globally with 74% of these deaths occurring in middle-income countries, such as Peru or Mexico. Road deaths in Latin America stand at 17 per 100,000 people, whereas in high-income countries, the figure is 8.7 per 100,000 people.

The United Nations (UN) has a system of minimum regulations to protect car occupants and other road users when crashes occur, such as seat belts, airbags and active safety systems.

Sadly, no Latin America government, other than Ecuador, is currently anywhere near fulfilling these standards. However, in the USA, or anywhere in Europe, or in Japan, or Australia – these standards are rigorously observed.

As a result, manufacturers, such as GM/Chevrolet, Nissan, Fiat, Volkswagen, Suzuki and Hyundai are producing cars for Latin American consumers with minimal or no safety features. This double standard is causing thousands of preventable deaths on Latin American roads.

Consumer groups pushing for change 

Improving car safety in Latin America is a goal that has united CI Member organisations in Latin America to work together on a regional advocacy campaign, sharing resources and expertise and applying these to pressure for change and support consumers to make more informed choices in their own countries.  For example:

Enrique Prado from the Automobile Association of Peru, Crisologo Caceres from ASPEC, Tamara Meza from CI and Stephan Brodziak from El Poder pose after the press conference

• El Poder del Consumidor in Mexico is pushing for legislative change, exposing the double standards of manufacturers such as GM/Chevrolet and Nissan and developing great consumer materials to raise awareness of unsafe cars being sold in Mexico.
• ASPEC in Peru has set up a multi-sectoral platform involving civil society, government ministries and car industry representatives to push for improved legislation in Peru. It is also raising consumer awareness through its daily radio shows broadcast throughout Peru.
• ODECU in Chile were keynote speakers at the recent Stop the Crash press conference and activity in Santiago to highlight key crash avoidance technologies such as Electronic Stability Control (ESC), and recently had a face-to-face meeting with Minister of Transport regarding improving car safety regulation.
• Union of Users and Consumers in Argentina have featured on national TV in Argentina calling on consumers to prioritise safety features when they buy a car and has been actively supporting Latin NCAP and highlighting misleading advertising by car manufacturers.
• Proteste in Brazil has been actively campaigning for the Brazilian government to bring forward the introduction of ESC, which is a potentially life-saving technology that prevents cars from skidding. They achieved widespread national coverage at their press day on ESC in March 2016.

CI report on car safety makes headline news

CI Regional Networker Tamara Meza and Stephan Brodziak from El Poder del Consumidor in Mexico giving interviews

Our most recent campaign highlight was the launch of our campaign report on car safety in Latin America in Lima in Peru in early June. Our report showed the scale of unsafe cars being sold in Latin America, and the poor quality information being provided to consumers about safety and has received some great press coverage. Our research highlighted that:

• Cars rated with zero or one stars by the New Car Assessment Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean (Latin NCAP) were best selling cars across Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil from 2012-2015
• Fifteen of the 22 cars tested by Latin NCAP and rated with zero or one stars are still being sold to in Latin America. In Peru - 10 models were available, in Chile - 9 models, Mexico – 5 models and Argentina – 4 models. Brazil has just one model available
• Latin NCAP have stated that car occupants in such cars would have little chance of surviving a crash at 64 km per hour
• GM/Chevrolet is the leading manufacturer of zero star cars in Latin America with best-selling zero star cars in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico from 2012-2015. That is at least 700,000 Chevrolet cars that would not be allowed on US roads.

And our qualitative mystery shopping study discovered that:

• In some cases car dealerships were unable to provide basic safety information to consumers, and instances of citing inaccurate information about car safety, such as saying the addition of two airbags will solve the poor safety performance of a zero star car.

Following the press launch, which has received widespread media coverage, a round table was held with participation from the Vice-Minister for the Environment, Transport Minister, State Ombudsman, State Consumer Protection Agency and Automobile Association of Peru. A multisector platform for advancing car safety was launched at the event and our colleagues at ASPEC had a follow up meeting in late June with the Director General from the Ministry of Transport. This is really brilliant news for the future of car safety in Peru.

Support the campaign

With our Members in Latin America, we been working alongside Global and Latin New Car Assessment Programmes to push for improved car safety regulation.

We are calling on:

• Governments and manufacturers across Latin America to adopt UN Vehicle Safety Regulations in full. This will stop the sale of unsafe cars and help reduce deaths and injuries on our roads 
• Manufacturers to provide accessible and accurate information to consumers about safety, in their dealerships and online 
• Consumer and other organisations concerned about car safety to work together to raise consumer awareness about car safety and the safety ratings of Latin NCAP

You can help stop the shocking double standard in global car safety standards by taking our campaign action

UN General Assembly resolution backs consumers’ right to safe vehicles

As a new UN resolution backs consumers’ rights to safe vehicles, Consumers International’s Director General Amanda Long outlines why urgent action to implement and enforce the resolution is vital to help stop the loss of life on our roads.

Consumers now have the weight of a formal United Nations General Assembly resolution behind them in their demand for safer cars. This is incredibly valuable as it provides a moral catalyst to car manufacturers and governments to improve vehicle safety standards throughout the world by 2020.

The resolution, adopted on April 15, is the strongest-ever United Nations commitment on road safety and is a significant milestone in the bid to curb the number of people killed and injured on our roads. The resolution puts consumer organisations in a stronger position to push for immediate action, holding government and manufacturers accountable to the standards.

This resolution comes at the mid-way point in the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020) and supports the ambitious road safety targets now included in the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. It sets a benchmark for safety standards by inviting Member States to adopt policies and measures to implement United Nations vehicle safety regulations or equivalent national standards to ensure that all new motor vehicles, meet applicable minimum regulations for occupant and other road users protection, with seat belts, air bags and active safety systems fitted as standard.

The Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2015 demonstrates the scale of the problem; noting only 40 countries require new vehicles to meet all seven priority safety regulations. ­­­

Image from Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2015

A safer future on the road for consumers

Safer vehicles are urgently needed in low and middle income countries, where consumers suffer from a dangerous double standards approach to safety. It is in these countries where 90% of the road traffic deaths occur, although they have only half of the world’s vehicles.

Major manufacturers continue to produce and sell millions of unsafe cars into weakly regulated low and middle income markets, such as Latin America and India, while simultaneously producing much safer cars for countries with high mandatory safety standards. This is despite costing as little as US $200 to install basic safety features such as air bags and strengthened bodywork.  This can no longer continue, and now the UN has made it clear in its resolution that Member States agree.

Image from Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2015

The right to safety is a fundamental consumer right. Governments should immediately introduce the UN mandated safety regulations and car manufacturers should voluntarily adopt them.

This would mean that consumers could be confident that any new car purchased globally will provide at least a minimum degree of protection. It would also ensure that the most unsafe cars, which score zero stars in NCAP tests (which test new cars for crash worthiness), are no longer being produced and sold to consumers.

Consumers International and its Members will continue to urge governments and producers to improve car safety.  For more information on our Global Car Safety Campaign, visit our website.

Safer Cars: Increased safety is paramount

Antonino Serra Cambaceres, Consumers International's 

Global Programme Manager for Consumer Justice and Protection, outlines why Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is needed in all vehicles following his personal experience of an ESC test on a race track in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The figures speak for themselves: every year more than 1.2 million people worldwide die from automobile accidents. Car safety is, therefore, an important issue and deserves the attention of those who advocate greater safeguards for consumers.

Consumers International (CI) is working on and supporting campaigns around the world to make cars safer. One way we are doing this is by calling for the inclusion of technological innovations in cars that help decrease the risk of fatal accidents. One of these new technologies is Electronic Stability Control (ESC), a device that allows cars to stabilise when a sudden and unexpected manoeuvre occurs, reducing the risk of roll-overs.

Many countries, including the United States, Israel, Ireland, Japan, Russia, South Korea and Turkey have decided that all new cars sold in their territories must have ESC. In the case of the United States, mandatory ESC was introduced in all new cars in 2012. It is estimated that the device has since saved more than 6,000 lives.

In Latin America the use of ESC is still a pending issue. In Brazil, the government expects that ESC will be mandatory for all new vehicles by 2022, a period too long for PROTESTE - Associação Brasileira de Defesa do Consumidor, one of CI's Brazilian Members , which launched a campaign to establish the device as mandatory by 2018, the date when it will be mandatory in Argentina.

On March 23, PROTESTE invited Brazilian and Mexican journalists for a demonstration of ESC at the Interlagos circuit in the city of Sao Paulo. The idea was to test two identical vehicles, one of which had ESC and the other not; a professional test driver was responsible for manoeuvring both cars with journalists as passengers, so they could personally experience the differences of stability in one car compared to the other.

I was fortunate  to do the test and confess that the result was striking. The driver took us first to the car without ESC by a part of the track and indicated, before performing sudden manoeuvres, the risks entailed with such movements. He then went to another part of the track that had been prepared in advance with cones and a copiously wet pavement and performed the same manoeuvres; showcasing the differences with the dry track. He later ran the tests with the car with ESC. The differences between the two were noticeable, and I experienced in practice how the car with ESC could quickly stabilise to prevent it from skidding or rolling over.

There is no doubt that this technology is essential in avoiding many of the accidents that occur today. Contrary to what one might suppose, the cost of including it in a car only makes a marginal impact on the final cost of the vehicle. We were informed that in Brazil the cost of installation is around USD $50. If we consider the price of some purely aesthetic car accessories like alloy wheels, spoilers or chrome fittings, or stereos that far exceed this figure and which are superfluous, the conclusion is that the inclusion of ESC should be urgent in all new models of cars.

Some luxury cars sold in Latin America already have ESC, raising the sad dichotomy that to have greater security more money is needed; the most popular cars that have the highest sales figures could still wait many years to include an essential device which, as noted, does not involve a significant cost.

We expect the Brazilian government to take note of this and bring forward the introduction of ESC in all cars to 2018. We also expect other Latin American governments to react, making ESC mandatory equipment for all vehicles as soon as possible.