Dacias Are About To Get Safer, Not More Expensive

Here’s some refreshing news from Dacia: at a time when we’re routinely shocked by how expensive cars seem to have become all of a sudden (£38k VW Golf GTI, anyone?), Renault’s budget-conscious Romanian sub-brand has announced that some of its range is to get a host of new safety tech with no change to their price.

The tech brings the Sandero, Sandero Stepway and Jogger in line with the EU’s Global Safety Regulation 2 (GSR2) rules, a set of active safety features that all new cars sold above a certain sales threshold in the EU must now have. These features include speed limit warning, lane-keep assist, automatic emergency braking, driver attention alerts, rear parking sensors and automatic headlights.

Anyone who’s driven a new car fitted with some or all of these features will know how teeth-grindingly irritating some of them can be, for instance having the car tug at the wheel in your hands because it can’t properly detect a lane marking, or beep incessantly at you because you accidentally strayed up to 71mph on a motorway.

That’s why Dacia is also fitting its updated models with a ‘My Safety’ button, which remembers your preferences for which of these systems you want to be switched on and off, so you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of deactivating them each time you get in the car. Nice touch.

The need to meet GSR2 rules is one of the multitudinous reasons new cars are getting so expensive, but true to its roots as an ultra-affordable manufacturer, Dacia has pledged to keep the prices of the updated models the same. That means the entry point remains £13,795 for the Sandero supermini, £15,295 for its lifted Stepway derivative, and £18,295 for the likeable Jogger people carrier, which we’re currently running as a long-termer.

Being newer models, the upcoming Spring EV and third-generation Duster are presumably already equipped with all the kit necessary for them to meet GSR2 rules. The Sandrider Dakar racer probably isn’t, though – we’re not sure how effective lane-keep assist is on top of a sand dune.