March 2020

14 AFTERMARKET MARCH 2020 BUSINESS www.aftermarketonline.net T he Americans love acronyms. They even have an acronym for acronyms – ‘TLA’ is a ‘three letter acronym’. Well, there is now a new acronym to remember, but this one is from the EU and has four letters (should that then be a ‘FLA’?) – ‘GSPR’, or more correctly known as the ‘General Safety Protection Regulation’. The official title is the ‘REGULATION (EU) 2019/2144 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 27 November 2019 on type-approval requirements for motor vehicles and their trailers, and systems, components and separate technical units intended for such vehicles, as regards their general safety and the protection of vehicle occupants and vulnerable road users’, a snappy little title that does not roll off your lips as easily as ‘GSPR’. This new Regulation has now passed into EU vehicle type approval law and will impose changes to vehicle design for all new vehicle models that are entering the market (i.e. new vehicle type approvals) from 6 July 2022. Motivation Let’s look at what this new Regulation is all about, and what relevance does it have to independent workshops. The motivation behind this Regulation is to address the problem of 25,300 people dying on Europe’s roads in 2017; a figure that has remained constant in the previous four years. Moreover, 135,000 people are seriously injured. In addition to the safety measures to protect vehicle occupants, there are also specific measures to prevent fatalities and injuries of vulnerable road users, such as cyclists and pedestrians to protect road users outside of the vehicle. By mandating these new safety systems, there should be a reduction in these figures, but equally, these vehicle systems will need diagnostics, repair and re-calibration, so there is a welcome potential for independent workshops. In simple terms, the legislator has imposed new safety related systems for new vehicles, but these systems are mainly Advanced Driver Assist Above: Vehicle safety systems require repair and re- calibration at times GSPR – IS IT A FOUR-LETTER WORD? The General Safety Protection Regulation is a mouthful, and it’s going to be here to stay from 2022. What will it mean for independent garages in practice?