ANCAP Challenges Howard and Rudd

ANCAP Boss Lauchlan McIntosh has issued a challenge to Prime Minister John Howard and hopeful Kevin Rudd to take vehicle safety seriously.

Speaking at the Road Safety and Policing Conference in Melbourne Mr McIntosh told fleet managers, who are in charge of more than 50% of Australian vehicles, to put pressure on the federal government to ensure safer vehicle standards by buying only four, five star safety rated cars.

“State governments have responsibility for safer drivers, federal and state governments have responsibility for safer roads – but clearly the federal government has the primary responsibility for safer cars,” Mr McIntosh said.

Currently all state governments contribute to ANCAP, making the Federal government the odd one out.

“With Mr Howard and Mr Rudd issuing daily challenges to each other, my challenge is issued to both; to declare where they stand on car safety, to commit to ANCAP and bring their Government in on this important road safety program” he said.

Only recently ANCAP launched its Stars on Cars program to provide a safety rating on all new car so that buyers are aware of the safety rating prior to purchasing. The move follows the United States, which recently mandated the placing of these safety rating labels on all new cars.

Although the Federal Government asked all manufacturers to put a label at the filler pipe on all new cars sold as to whether an ethanol blended fuel could be used, both Labor and Liberal have so far not covered their policy on vehicle safety.

It would seem a little more important to know the vehicle safety rating than whether or not it can use ethanol fuel!