In Ireland it's a good idea offering incentives, given that until quite recently there was no requirement for an annual inspection (one of the arguements against introducing it was that all the little old ladies who ran their cars to the post office and shops once a week would be disadvantaged having to keep their vehicle roadworthy!!)
The carrot approach has some merit....
What I would say on vehicle secondary safety (what happens when you crash it!) is that nearly any older vehicle will come off significantly worse than a new-ish vehicle, even if it's from a smaller class. I won't go into details on the BX again as we've had a topic on that before.
Since the ZX has been mentioned I'll use that as an example
As we know, it platform shares with the 306 HOWEVER the detail construction is significantly different enough that the ZX generally comes off worse than a 306 in a given accident scenario (there's a good reason that ZXs are generally several insurance groups higher than equiv. 306). If you were unfortunate enough to hit say a new shape Renault Clio, the Clio driver will be the one most likely to be walking away from the accident without injury.
Part of the price we pay from progress on modern vehicles is that they're getting bigger (hence Clio isn't actually much smaller than the ZX which would generally be considered to be in the same class as the Focus), heavier and most critically stiffer. Good for occupant safety of the stiffer vehicle, but leads to compatibility issues with whatever you're hitting, particularly if it's an older vehicle.
I've got some photos at home of old Renault models dating back to the 60's through to the current Megane which were all crashed to the same Euro NCAP test procedure - trust me, things have moved on a hell of a lot in a relatively short space of time! I'll post them up when I get home. I witnessed their 10,000th crash test late last year - to get to 5,000 took from 1973 (when their centre was built) to the late-1990's. The second 5,000 took less than 10 years!
Adrian
