The NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) initiatives and most media reports are focussing on new cars. The roads paint a different picture. The average age of passenger cars is e.g. in Germany about 8 years. Only one third of all cars in Europe have an age of 5 years or less.

Little is known about the safety level of cars used for several years. Wear of safety relevant components, more and more rarely inspections, an increasing number of non original spare parts. These few examples make clear that the new cars’ safety level cannot be kept over the years.

The decrease in safety leads to increasing risks – the risk of causing an accident due to technical problems like reduced braking power and the risk for the occupants in an accident due to problems like not working airbags.

But how can such problems be solved or at least be minimised? Which starting points are most promising to achieve the best benefit for society and road safety?

According the European harmonization regulation 2010/48/EG every passenger car has to be tested along its lifetime in service after registration and type approval. DEKRA is doing more than 20 Mio vehicle inspections every year in Europe as well as in other countries outside Europe. The over all results have been evaluated out of these test reports.

Additional results of a special project named SafetyCheck are used to learn more about the technical status of cars of young (inexperienced) drivers. SafetyCheck is a free of charge offer for an inspection of safety relevant components for young drivers.

The third pillar of the study is the DEKRA “technical defects” database (TD) based on in depth investigations. The database contains information of more than 10,000 vehicles involved in accidents caused or influenced by technical defects within the last 10 years.

The combination of the three sources periodical technical inspection (PTI), TD and SafetyCheck is a unique combination to illustrate the influence of the vehicle age against the road safety.

The safety degradation over lifetime is obvious and significant even starting with the 5th year in service and drastically after 7 years. The SafetyCheck initiative confirms the PTI results showing mayor problems of young drivers’ cars. There are also indications that some problems of older cars are related to ADAS like ESC. The analysis of the TD database is also confirming the results of the PTI. One striking component mentioned in all three data sets is the braking system.

The final consequence might be an advanced program especially focused on cars with high mileage and on older cars. This program should also include an education of the society to show the need of qualified service to retain the implemented safety level.

Besides a high safety level of new cars the preservation of the safety during the vehicles’ lifetime is an important goal. Results of inspections can thus be used to further improve new car testing methods to minimise life time safety losses.