In South Africa we place a lot of emphasis on the high rate of crime.  The truth for most people though, living in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, is that they are far more at risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident than they are of crime.   It is for that reason that the choice of car makes such a difference because there are obviously cars that are safer than other cars and as a rule, generally the bigger and heavier your car is, the safer it is likely to be.  A 2,500 kg car, such as mine, is less likely to crumble in an accident than an 800 kg small passenger vehicle, although of course it depends what you hit – or hits you and how.  If you both hit a truck, there will not be too much difference.  The reality though is that not all vehicles on the road are trucks, and most of the time you are going to be involved with a vehicle of either a similar size or slightly bigger than your vehicle, and if you are in a vehicle that weighs more and has more and better safety features, you are more likely to survive the accident or to survive it with less severe injuries than you would have if you were in a passenger car.  

When I was a candidate attorney my boss’s wife used to drive a Golf, and on the one day when she borrowed his Mercedes, she was swiped from the side and straightaway he got her a new car saying that if she had been in the Golf on that day, he thought that things would have gone much worse for her and the children in the car.  Obviously, a lot of people will immediately say that they would like to drive car X or Y, and I am not really talking about brand names, but more the design and weight of the car, but cannot afford to.  That is true for many, but all cars do have safety ratings and before buying a car, one should look in one’s price range and then look up the various models on a website such as www.euroncap.com to see the relative safety ratings of the car as these ratings are considered most important in Europe, for example.  I expect all the usual fatalistic answers as well as the “I cannot afford that car” answers, but it is something one should consider and I think most people would find that their budget suddenly could stretch a bit more if they knew for certain that they are about to be in a certain accident and in the one car they are going to die and in the other car they are going to survive it perfectly – and of course there is always the second hand market as well where for less money than the more sporty look you may well get a safer car.