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Online car insurer, elephant.co.uk, researched its database
of 300,000 cars to see what percentage of different nationality
cars were involved in a road accident in the last year. It discovered
that overall German cars are the most likely to have a crash, followed
by Italian cars such as Fiats and Alfa Romeos. Czech Skodas are
the least likely to be in an accident.
Last year elephant.co.uk did some similar research into
nationality and theft rates and found that German cars were also
the most likely to be stolen.
Head elephant at elephant.co.uk, Tanzie Oliver, said: "Germany
makes some of the best designed cars in the world, but our statistics
suggest they could also be the unluckiest."
Here is elephant.co.uk's complete table of accident rates
for different nationalities of cars:
| 1st |
German |
| 2nd |
Italian |
| 3rd |
Japanese |
| 4th |
French |
| 5th |
American |
| 6th |
Korean |
| 7th |
Swedish |
| 8th |
British |
| 9th |
Spanish |
| 10th |
Czech |
Quite why German cars should be involved in more accidents than
others is not clear. It is unlikely owners of German car owners
are any more reckless than other drivers are.
Tanzie Oliver has one suggestion, "BMWs and Mercedes are such
lovely cars, maybe they attract jealousy from other road users!
But seriously, we wouldn't want to put anyone off buying a German
car, they are amongst the safest to drive and keep their value better
than almost any other models.
"What our research does suggest though is that if you want
to stay bump free maybe you should think about buying a Skoda."
Issue date: 20/02/2004
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