Huge response to used car safety ratings - LTSA

For immediate release
13 August 2004

Huge response to used car safety ratings - LTSA

Public demand for used car safety ratings released earlier this week has been huge, the Land Transport Safety Authority said today.

The LTSA reports a more than three-fold increase in the volume of calls processed by its free phone helpdesk, with the majority of callers ordering copies of the Buyer's Guide to Used Car Safety Ratings, launched on Wednesday.

"Yesterday the helpdesk received 990 calls, and 730 of them were people ordering the Used Car Safety Ratings booklet - on an average day the helpdesk gets about 300 calls. There has also been a huge spike in visitors to our website, with 15,000 users visiting the new section for used car safety ratings since Wednesday, and 1,300 downloading hard copies of the brochure.

"That's good news for road safety, because armed with this information consumers will begin to demand safer used cars, and the industry should respond by importing safer models," said John White, LTSA Manager of Safer Vehicles Policy.

The Buyer's Guide to Used Car Safety Ratings uses data from over one million crashes on New Zealand and Australian roads to rate 255 popular used cars on how well they protect their drivers and how badly they injure the drivers of other cars.

The Used Car Safety Ratings booklet is available free by ringing 0800 699 000, and the ratings are also available on the LTSA website, www.ltsa.govt.nz.

ENDS

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