Ford Focus MK1 - NCAP - older vehicle safety. | Technical matters | Back Room Forum

Wed 27 Aug 2014 11:16

Ford Focus MK1 - NCAP - older vehicle safety. - ipsga

I've just been reading the safety stats, or lack of, on the Euro NCAP site. Looking at both my current car which is a 03 Civic and a MK1 Ford Focus, there is no information available other than:

A passenger airbag is standard, presenting a real danger of death to any child placed in a rear-facing restraint on the front seat. Only a pictogram fixed to the end of the facia warns against this, which Euro NCAP considers inadequate. Ford says much clearer warnings will be attached to cars from February 23. What’s more, fitting instructions were not visible if installing a restraint from the left-hand-side of the vehicle. Ford says that an additional label will be fixed to seats manufactured from the beginning of January. In the frontal impact, the child restraints protected the 18-month and the three-year-old. But the three-year-old’s head was not contained within the restraint during the side impact.

I am not in a position to upgrade to a safer vehicle unfortunately and we have a baby on the way, also the Civic is a 3 door which looks like a bit of a pain..But more alarming is the first sentence in the test.

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Wed 27 Aug 2014 11:40

Ford Focus MK1 - NCAP - older vehicle safety. - FP

Hang on - this is absolutely standard information, applicable to any car.

It means you don't put the child in a rear-facing "restraint" (=child seat) on the front passenger seat (unless you can switch off the airbag on that side).

The other bit you've emphasised ("...the three-year-old’s head was not contained within the restraint during the side impact") points to an issue with a particular child seat, not an issue with the car.

Edited by FP on 27/08/2014 at 11:44

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Wed 27 Aug 2014 12:00

Ford Focus MK1 - NCAP - older vehicle safety. - ipsga

Thanks, warning bells were going off as I read it, and I was alarmed when I read No information Available for either 18 Month or 3yr old, safety is paramount as we have a baby on the way, its good to know that the older vehicles are still plenty safe enough, panic over!

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Wed 27 Aug 2014 13:30

Ford Focus MK1 - NCAP - older vehicle safety. - slkfanboy

The way the effects of an impact on human body was done, was by take an already dead person and impacting them with a known force. The body can then be examined. No one as done such tests with childrens bodies and therefore it's hard to be sure what a real fatal impact would be, therefore asumptions have been made. Basically children are assumed to be at risk in the front of a car reguardless of being rear or front car seat. Air bag are know to have caused injury to people who sit to close (i.e. seat fully forward) and a min. distance is recommended( Often people who are not tall are at risk). clear recommends for all people regardless of age do exist but it's often hard to find them.

Basically the older a car this is less data as NCAP evolved and car are less safe, Is very hard to compare new car to old car via the NCAP system.

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Wed 27 Aug 2014 13:40

Ford Focus MK1 - NCAP - older vehicle safety. - Chris M

Many here will have grown up in the days before airbags, rear seat belts and even front seatbelts. We are here to tell the tale.

Now I'm not saying that modern safety features aren't desirable and new parents, just like parents of 50 years ago, want to do the best for their kids, but the most important safety feature a car has is the driver. It's the driver's responsibility to ensure the car is roadworthy and it's down to the driver to drive within the safe limits of the car and the road. I know you can't always control what other road users do, but you can drive defensively.

I think all the electronic safety gizmos fitted today give drivers a false sense of security.

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Thu 28 Aug 2014 15:14

Ford Focus MK1 - NCAP - older vehicle safety. - thunderbird

I think all the electronic safety gizmos fitted today give drivers a false sense of security.

Only if you are stupid, and there are loads of stupid people on the road..

They are there to help should you get into a situation where without them there would be problems.

Couple of examples. In the early 90's I had a hire car with ABS fitted, never driven with it before. On about the second day a car came down a sliproad when I was in lane 2 and drove strait in front of me. To avoid an accident I had to turn and brake heavily and the ABS activated. I slowed with no issues. If I had been in my own car without ABS it could have been very nasty. All my car purchases since then have had ABS.

A chap at work has a new Volvo fitted with automatic braking. Came into work the other day saying how wonderful it is.HIs wife had been out and when she was approaching another car way too fast it braked the car safely and avoided an accident. In that instance I told him that she was clearly not paying attention to the road ahead at which point he went very quiet.

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Thu 28 Aug 2014 21:21

Ford Focus MK1 - NCAP - older vehicle safety. - Cyd

In the early 90's I had a hire car with ABS fitted, never driven with it before. On about the second day a car came down a sliproad when I was in lane 2 and drove strait in front of me. To avoid an accident I had to turn and brake heavily and the ABS activated. I slowed with no issues. If I had been in my own car without ABS it could have been very nasty. All my car purchases since then have had ABS.

I was first introduced to ABS in the late 80s. My motor club went to a driving day at Manby airfield. One of the members had one of the first Audi Quattro's fitted not only with ABS, but also with an OFF button for it.
Whilst we were being rotated for the rally driving tuition, the rest of us "experimented" with various aspects of the Quattro's performance. We had a course set out in cones and attempted to "beat the ABS" - ie see if we could stop the car quicker manually (cadence braking) or with ABS. This was on dry concrete and without exception no-one could get within about 5m of the stopping distance manually compared to ABS (from about 50 iirc). We're talking about drivers with varying degrees of performance driving pedigree here too (most had a rally car of some sort).

Soon after that I had cause to be testing an 827 round Gaydon. After touching about 130 on the runway, which was wet, I had to brake hard to avoid going off at the hairpin - it was ABS all the way under perfect control in a nice straight line. After a little more, ahem, "practice" ( I had to unlearn cadence braking) I found I could chuck that car about quite dramatically under hard braking. I kind of wish I could repeat that session today in my 9-3 with its much more advanced system.

ABS has to be about the best passive safety system introduced into cars, ever.

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Thu 28 Aug 2014 21:47

Ford Focus MK1 - NCAP - older vehicle safety. - Andrew-T

No doubt ABS is a Good Thing, though it can be a little disconcerting when it cuts in if you usually drive unexcitingly and are surprised by it.

However the 'gizmos' are not 100% ideal, because drivers will adapt to their new vehicle with the gizmos and in time will drive a bit 'nearer the limit' than in their previous car. Not many gizmos will give a driver more road awareness, but some may do the opposite. It has been said that an automatic flick-blade in the centre of the steering wheel instead of an airbag could have a worthwhile effect.

When in Canada 50 years ago - almost before seatbelts were thought of - I was ridiculed for driving a small British car (a p**spot they called it) because the 18-foot upholstered bathtubs most people drove were 'safer in an accident'. I pointed out that if all cars were smaller they wouldn't collide as often.

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