VACC urges mandatory car checks

Popular campaigns against drink driving and speeding are overshadowing an equally important message of vehicle safety, according to the chamber's executive director, David Purchase. "I think that there is too great an emphasis on road safety at the expense of vehicle safety," he says. He says the road safety message is too narrowly focused.

Purchase says it is too easy to push "glamorous" high-profile road safety campaigns at the expense of rudimentary safety. Although he applauded the initiatives undertaking by the Victorian Government, Police and VicRoads "there is not a commensurate effort in ensuring that our vehicles are safe".

"What's the bloody use of having our roads as safe as anything and our vehicles unsafe?" He says unroadworthy vehicles are becoming an increasing problem as the economic downturn forces people to cut corners with vehicle maintenance.

Purchase believes there is a good reason to have compulsory annual vehicle checks, particularly for small commercial vehicles. "They're a business vehicle," he says. "They should be treated as part of the occupational health and safety process." Purchase accepts that his views are politically unpopular. "It's not a vote winner," he says. "But we've been campaigning for mandatory checks for 30 years but the time has come to put it back on the agenda."

Purchase says the current safety campaigns, although valid, do not address the whole motoring message. "You can't knock what they're doing on road safety but you can say there is too much emphasis on it at the expense of vehicle safety," he says.

"Look at the irony of the Victorian Government compelling electronic stability control and yet they do nothing about bald tyres?" he says. "We know ESC will work on bald tyres but it won't work as well. What point is having stability control if other parts of the car are unsafe?"

VACC research shows a growing number of vehicles with faulty brakes, steering, lights, tyres and seatbelts. Its recent findings show that 25 per cent of Victorian vehicles failed a five-point safety check involving tyres, steering, seatbelts, headlights and brakes. Alarmingly, its most recent figures reveal that almost 20 per cent of relatively new cars under 100,000km failed the check.

In the past government agencies have believed that the incidence of unroadworthy vehicles contributing to the road toll were quite low. "The government owes it to the community to do more about educating drivers that their vehicles must be safe," he says.

The VACC will continue to push its own five-point safety check for consumers and will also add to its research data on vehicle safety. "It's about education," he says. "Most people don't know when their tyres are bad or brakes are not as good as they should be."