Nearly half of UK car buyers don’t know how safe their car is

Almost half of new car buyers (49.5%) do not know the Euro NCAP safety rating of their car, while more than 10% aren't aware of what a Euro NCAP safety rating is at all.

Those are two of the findings of the latest What Car? survey of in-market car buyers. However, 43.5% of respondents said they would not consider a car which achieved less than four stars out of five in Euro NCAP safety tests.

Surprisingly, 3.5% of people said they would be perfectly comfortable buying a zero-star car. 

Of the respondents who were aware of Euro NCAP safety ratings, 13% said that the safety rating was not very important to them when considering a car purchase, with 29.4% thinking it very important.

We also asked which safety technologies respondents would want as standard in their next car, with more than half (53.3%) listing automatic headlights and 48.4% blind spot warnings.

Automatic emergency braking (AEB) was cited by 43.0%, and more than a third (34.8%) considered lane departure warnings important for their next car.

In 2020 Euro NCAP toughened up its safety tests, which consider a vehicle’s crash protection as well as its active safety systems, such as automatic emergency braking, lane keep assist and other features, for a combined rating.

Cars without active safety systems can score poorly in the latest format even if they perform well in crash testing.

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