Dacia boss: “We know that people deactivate lane keep assist, so why would we sell it?”

“I’m not worried about anything actually,” says an animated Dacia boss Denis Le Vot when TG asks whether the brand’s recent one- and two-star Euro NCAP safety ratings are getting to him.

“The whole thing is about making choices, and you know that we are serious about passive safety, because we care about people. But there is a whole thing about active safety which we can discuss.”

Le Vot isn’t wrong about Dacia’s passive safety. When the Sandero Stepway and Logan were given two stars in April 2021, Euro NCAP’s report read: “Crash protection is respectable, with performance that would make the car a four-star performer if it were not for its shortcomings elsewhere.”

Those shortcomings elsewhere refer to the lack of active safety tech in Dacia’s cars, something which Euro NCAP now requires and which led to the Jogger being awarded just one star in April 2022. But Le Vot insists that active tech should be a choice…

“Lots of people deactivate the lane keep assist,” he says. “You do that because you’re a human being and you assess the situation so you deactivate the technology. What we do is we don’t sell it to you. We know that people deactivate lane keep assist, so why would we sell it?

“This is very philosophical, we can talk for seven hours on it, but it’s really a choice. We make it very seriously and we care very much about the passive safety, but on the active safety we make choices. It’s not central to us.”

Le Vot was speaking at Dacia’s Manifesto event where the budget brand unveiled the brilliant buggy-like Manifesto Concept, and where the boss also told TG that Dacia would be one of the last brands to fully electrify its cars.