Safety Features to Look For in a Used Car

What safety features are actually required here

Less than you'd think, and a lot less than most guides on this subject claim.

You'll read that autonomous emergency braking, or AEB, became compulsory on new cars in the UK in 2022, or in 2024. It didn't.

That rule is the EU's General Safety Regulation, and the Department for Transport says plainly that it "is not mandated in GB". It came in after the UK left the EU.

So a brand new car can legally be sold in Great Britain today with no AEB fitted at all.

That's changing, slowly. In July 2026 the government confirmed it will legislate to require 18 safety technologies on new mass-produced vehicles. But no date has been set for any of it. Every deadline in that document counts from the moment the law enters into force, and it hasn't.

None of which matters much for the car you're looking at. A used car was built to the rules of its own build year, and no rule made later reaches back to it. There isn't a retrofit.

So the question isn't what's required now, it's what was required then, and what the first owner paid extra for on top. That decision is part of buying a used car properly.

What you can count on, by the year it was built

Some kit really is guaranteed, and three dates do most of the work.

Stability control is the one that keeps a car pointing where you steered it when the tyres lose grip. Under the general safety rules kept in UK law after Brexit, new car types had to have it from November 2011. From November 2014 a car without it couldn't be registered or sold new. So on an ordinary car first registered from late 2014, it's a certainty.

One exception. An import approved individually rather than as a UK model sits outside that rule, so check that car yourself.

Tyre pressure monitoring sits in the same regulation and lands on the same end date.

eCall is different, and the wording matters. That duty falls on new types of vehicle. A model already approved before March 2018 could carry on being built and sold without it. So a 2019 car doesn't automatically have eCall, and plenty don't.

Anything older is a car-by-car job. Airbags and anti-lock brakes were widespread long before any of these dates, but widespread isn't the same as guaranteed. It's the specific car that counts.

AEB and the rest are still optional here

Everything above is basic or passive, and the clever stuff isn't covered by any of it.

Emergency braking, lane keeping, blind-spot monitoring, drowsiness warnings, speed assistance, reversing cameras. In Great Britain, they're all still down to the manufacturer.

That doesn't make them rare. Most makers build one specification for Europe and sell it here too, because a separate British version costs money for no return. The DfT expects most manufacturers to fit the technologies anyway, and says large numbers of vehicles already comply ahead of the deadlines.

But it says something else in the same breath. "It remains possible that certain new vehicles will not be equipped with these features." It also notes that advanced systems "have been more frequently available in high-end models, so individuals with higher incomes have more often accessed these technologies".

Read that as a used-car buyer and it means one thing. The base trim and the top trim of the same car, same year, same badge, can be very different on safety kit. A brochure describes a range of cars, and it doesn't describe the one on the drive.

Northern Ireland isn't the same

Worth knowing if a car has come across the water.

The EU rules that don't apply in Great Britain do apply in Northern Ireland, under the Windsor Framework. The government's own response says so, and gives closing that gap as one reason for legislating.

The dates matter. Those rules applied to new model types from July 2022, and to every new registration from 7 July 2024. So a car first registered in Belfast after that date had to have emergency braking and speed assistance fitted.

The same model first registered in Birmingham didn't. Both are perfectly legal, they just aren't the same specification.

It's a small point for most buyers. It isn't small if you're comparing two apparently identical cars and one is a Northern Ireland import.

Is the tech worth paying for?

For emergency braking the evidence is real, and it's old enough to cover the cars you can afford.

That study pooled crash data from a number of countries. Two things about it matter.

It measured low-speed AEB, the city-braking sort, which is what a car from the mid-2010s tends to have. And it counted rear-end crashes only, so it isn't a claim that AEB prevents 38% of all accidents.

The researchers found no statistical evidence of a difference between urban and rural speed zones. The effect held in both.

I'd treat AEB as the one feature worth walking away from a car over, if two otherwise equal cars are in front of you. The rest are nice to have, but that one has real numbers behind it.

Speed assistance needs a caveat. Thatcham Research points out that it's an assistance system, and that it can be switched off or overridden at any time. Wrong information from it "does not exempt drivers from speed limit infractions". None of this kit drives the car for you, it catches the mistake you were about to make.

How to check what this particular car has

Now the awkward bit, because there's no lookup for any of this.

Your V5C logbook won't help. The law setting out what a registration document holds lists the plate, the keeper and the registration dates. Then make and model, engine size, the type approval number, the VIN, fuel type, seats and weights. No equipment of any kind, and no options.

DVLA's free vehicle enquiry doesn't carry it either. It gives tax, MOT expiry, first registration date, year of manufacture, type approval category, weight, engine size, fuel and emissions. That's useful for placing a car against the dates above, and silent on what's fitted.

A car history check doesn't carry it either, ours included. A check tells you what has happened to a car, not what came with it when it was new.

So you do it the direct way:

• Look in the car. Settings menus list what's installed, so no lane-keeping entry almost always means no lane keeping.
• Read the handbook, watching for the "if fitted" wording. Most cover the whole model range.
• Ask for the build data. A franchised dealer for that make can usually pull the original specification from the VIN.
• Get the original order form if the seller still has it. That's where optional packs are listed.
• Try it on the test drive. Blind-spot warnings, parking sensors and cameras all announce themselves in a minute. Test-driving a used car properly is the moment to do it.

Don't take the advert's feature list as proof. Whoever wrote it typed it in from the model brochure more often than from the car. It's one of the things worth asking a seller about directly.

Does any of it still work?

A ten-year-old car's safety kit has had ten years to break. Some of it gets checked every year, and most of it never does.

The MOT does test a few things properly. Airbags fitted as original equipment are checked, and a missing or obviously dead one is a major failure. So is a warning lamp reporting a fault in the restraint system. Stability control gets a full inspection on every car that has it, covering the wheel speed sensors, the wiring, the switch and the lamp.

Tyre pressure monitoring is tested too, over in the tyres section of the manual. That check covers cars first used on or after 1 January 2012, and skips motor caravans, ambulances and hearses over 2,500kg.

Now the gap. Nothing in the MOT tests emergency braking, lane keeping, blind-spot monitoring or any other driver-assistance system, and searching the inspection manual for them turns up nothing.

That isn't us reading the silence. The government's consultation found respondents saying the MOT "may need updating to help ensure that mandated systems continue to function correctly". Many saw it as "the most suitable way to check that these systems continue to work properly". You only argue for that if it isn't already happening.

So the annual test confirms the old kit still works, and says nothing at all about the new kit.

What a repair does to it

Here's where a history check earns its place, and it's narrower than you might hope.

The cameras and sensors that run driver assistance mostly sit behind the windscreen or in the front bumper. Move them, replace them, or replace the glass in front of them, and they need recalibrating. Thatcham Research's position is that where such parts are in a repair, calibration afterwards "must be completed to confirm sensors are functioning to the vehicle manufacturers' specified tolerances".

That's an industry standard and an insurer requirement. It isn't a legal duty on the person selling you the car, and it isn't an MOT item either. Nobody has to prove to you that it was done.

What a check gives you is the fact of the damage. The Comprehensive check carries write-off markers and accident category history. It can't tell you who repaired the car, or whether they recalibrated anything.

On a car with a repair in its history, I'd want the invoice, and I'd want calibration on it. That's a question for the seller, not an answer from a report. Anyone telling you a check reveals a car's safety specification is overselling it.

Star ratings have a shelf life

One warning is worth having before you go shopping on Euro NCAP scores.

A rating is valid for up to six years and then expires, because the tests get harder. Euro NCAP says comparing ratings from different years "is only meaningful if the changes to the rating system were minor". Our guide to the best used cars for new drivers covers that in detail.

The bit that belongs here is dual ratings. Since 2016 some cars have carried two: one for the standard car, and a higher one if an optional safety pack is fitted. For that second score to exist, the maker has to sell the pack as a standalone option and meet minimum fitment rates.

Which lands back where this started. A five-star badge may be describing a car with a pack that the one you're looking at doesn't have. Check the car, not the model.

Common questions