Vehicle technology has improved over the last 10 years to include many safety features. Although the average age of a vehicle in Australia is higher than the average in most developed countries, you will still find some people with cars that do not have the safety benefits of the modern vehicles. You do not want your teen to be driving a car that does not have safety features. There are many lobbyists who are pressuring the government to make it easy for people to afford new vehicles that can help reduce injuries and fatalities on the road. Stop Using Old Cars In Australia, the average age for light commercial vehicles is 10.4 years and passenger vehicles is 9.8 years. It is unfortunate that most people are driving older cars. Statistics show that 80% of people under 20 years old who died as a result of road accident and 75% of those who suffered serious injuries in the last five years were driving cars that are older than 10 years old. If that is not worrisome enough, 45% of the deaths happened in vehicles that were 15 years or older. Despite this statistic, parents give their children the older vehicles, while they drive the new model. While this makes sense economically, it is not sensible to give a teenager a 15 year old car. Use GOFAR’s Ray to monitor your teen’s driving behaviour. GOFAR will help you establish if the teen is going around corners too fast. It will also give you the car health stats and alert you when there is a problem. Share the Family Car Photo courtesy of Free Stock Photos by CDC/ Amanda Mills The teens who drive their own car are more likely to crash the car than those that share the family car because the shared car needs more planning and parental inspection. Parents ought to be more involved in their children’s driving habits and share the family car. Family cars tend to be better maintained compared to private vehicles because parents do not want to get stuck on the road due to mechanical breakdown. Know that the Older the Car, the Riskier it Becomes According to the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP), a car that is 12.5 years old is thrice as likely to cause an accident as a car that is younger than that age. ANCAP tracked the cars year of manufacture and how long it has been on the road to establish its likelihood of being involved in an accident. Year of ManufacturePercentage on the RoadFatality Percentage 2001 and before20%36% 2002-200622%22% 2007-201127%13% 2012 201732%12% From this table, you can conclude that new cars are safer than older cars and that’s why it’s important to ask the government while there are not many incentives to help people buy new cars.