Safety number one priority when choosing a car
THERE’S some irony in this piece of research I came across. Women place safety as their number one priority when buying a car, yet are 30% less likely to know about the existence of eSafety systems than men.
The research by the eSafetyAware! campaign found that while safety scored highly as a priority – women are involved in seven out of 10 car purchase decisions – their safety system knowledge was low. The levels ranged from 56% for Speed Alert systems down to 35% for Lane Support systems. Women consistently scored lower than men in awareness of the existence of such devices, as much as 50% for some systems.
That seems an immense shame to me. All that great technology that’s crammed into cars – or available as an option – is not fully understood by the driver, particularly if the driver is female.
I asked my wife Alison, and Business Car Manager co-director, whether she considered herself knowledgeable about safety systems.
“Personally I wouldn’t agree with the findings, because I know about things like anti-lock ABS brakes and anti skid ASR that we have on our Audi A6. I’ve also tried Audi’s side assist – which tells you when a car is in your blind spot – and that’s really useful. But then we’re in the business, so I suppose I should know such things.
“However, I do appreciate the safety systems on the Audi. You certainly feel very safe driving the car, and there are lots of secondary safety systems that enhance that feeling of safety. For instance, the automatic light sensing – when it starts to get dark, the headlamps come on automatically.
“I also like the sat-nav. I feel very safe with it. I’m not great with maps but having the sat-nav guide you to unknown destinations is really very reassuring, especially for a woman driving on her own.
“If you add to that the lovely drive – for a large car it doesn’t feel heavy and it’s easy to park – then it creates that sense of safe reassurance.”
The eSafetyAware! campaign is trying to make a difference to understanding safety items, though.
