Gadgetory

it's been years since you could buy a new car in the US without stability control dual front airbags have been required on cars here since 96 and yet there are places in the world right now where new 2015's are rolling out of the showroom without a single airbag or stability control or even much of a body structure look at how this Indian market datsun go fails in a crash test the main impact absorbing structure seems to be the driver the Dacia Sandero sold in Europe gets a four star rating a version sold in brazil last model year got a one-star rating as you can imagine they improved it after that because nothing chases dangerous cars out of the marketplace faster than miserable crash rating but who is minding the store globally interglobal in camp global new car assessment program the idea is to stitch together crash testing programs in different regions around the world into one global standard to get automakers to basically have no excuse while offering less safe cars Europe already has euro end cap Australia and New Zealand have n cap there's latin end cap china's see end cap and bharat end cap under consideration in India but a true global standard will be sought at a major auto safety conference in Brazil this november when the UN will push for global end cap that means all cars worldwide would have common passenger cell strength standards common pedestrian impact protection standards and electronic stability control of course the big problem here is cost that datsun go we saw earlier costs like 60 100 bucks the Tata Nano is under 3000 some of the safety gear and American cars cost more than that never mind the price of the car so we'll watch with keen interest how they sort out that hurt approach that cost gap at conference in Brazil in the meantime whatever you drive phase two double check that it's got good crash test safety ratings more realities of modern driving revealed now at cnet on cars.com click on smarter driving