CRASH TEST DUMMIES: Ordinary South Africans not present in safer cars AA forum — it’s a problem

For a discussion about the democratisation of vehicle safety in Africa, there was a distinct lack of community voices present at the AA and Global Ncap Forum for Safer Mobility that took place in Cape Town on 1 September.

Bobby Ramagwede, CEO of the Automobile Association (AA) of South Africa, told Daily Maverick that he has a standard email template that he sends to the Department of Transport. At the very top is a request to fix the passenger rail network.

“The difference – well one of the many – between South Africa and Europe is that they have trains, trams and then cars to choose from,” he explains on the sidelines of the Forum for Safer Mobility.

A highlight of the forum was the unveiling of a smashed Toyota Starlet, not with curtain airbags installed to make the grade for an additional star in the AA’s local testing – basically a PR exercise where selected cars cannot achieve higher than tw0 out of five stars if curtain airbags are not installed.

There was little (if any) material difference between the bend of the mangled side panel on the newly upgraded Startlet and the pictures of the model without the additional airbags.

Instead of addressing Daily Maverick questions about why the AA ignores the structural integrity of the vehicle’s high-tensile steel in its star ratings, Ramagwede evaded the failure of structural deformity by pivoting to biomechanical harm:

“This one still failed on on the deformity, yes. But you got to keep in mind that the Ndcap rating is a measure of the biomechanical harm done to the occupant as opposed to the structural deformation. It is important for structural deformation to occur within an acceptable range.