Eco Stickers Will Not be Reclassified to the Detriment of Older Vehicles

The general director of the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT), Pere Navarro, spoke recently about the challenges of older vehicles in Spain, and clarified that the environmental badge, or eco sticker, will not be reclassified to their detriment.

Navarro recognised the immense effort made by the automobile industry to improve the safety of its vehicles with the progressive incorporation of ADAS (driving aids). The same incident with a vehicle less than 5 years old can save your life, you will emerge unscathed, while with an older vehicle it will have serious consequences. Specifically, the risk of dying or being seriously injured is multiplied by two when comparing incidents that occur with vehicles 10 to 15 years old, in relation to vehicles less than 5 years old. In terms of emissions, there is also a big difference: a recent Euro 6 (label C) emits 60 mg/km of NOx while another one prior to 2001 (Euro 3, label B) emits 2.5 times more.

With the figures for the year 2022, it is clearly observed that the average age of the passenger cars in which those who died in incidents were traveling was 14.8 years in the case of interurban roads and 15.4 on urban roads, while the average age of the circulating fleet of passenger cars was 11.8 years. At the DGT they work on the education and training of drivers to avoid human error, but if this occurs, the driving aids for new vehicles will greatly minimise the consequences.

There has been talk about a possible update to vehicle labelling and its impact on access to Low Emission Zones (ZBE). Navarro stated that updating the current system of environmental labels is one of the tasks that has been studied for some time with several options identified on the table, but still without decided evaluation criteria, due to the disparity in technologies and aspects to be taken into account such as Euro 7 regulations or the future new EU Air Quality Directive.

In any case, there will not be a general reclassification that will cause existing vehicles to lose access rights, but will affect new vehicles more. The change process will have among its priorities a very broad communication strategy with the collaboration of manufacturers and institutions together with the DGT and with an information period of sufficient duration to reduce confusion.