Car safety has come along in leaps and bounds over the last five decades. However, this shocking test demonstrates the gulf between modern cars and ones built less than 20 years ago.

It’s amazing to think how far car safety has come since the invention of the automobile. Some of you might even remember a time when airbags weren’t fitted as standard on cars. But it’s not just safety inside the vehicle that’s been enhanced – things have got better outside the car, too. And now a test in Australia has demonstrated just how much things have improved since the turn of the century.

To put into perspective how much we’ve come to depend on the car over the last 100 years, we can take a look at road accident statistics. In 1899 just 26 people died in car accidents in the U.S. Fast forward to 2016, and that figure stands at over 37,000. That’s nearly 12 people for every 100,000 of the population.

Airbags were introduced in cars sold in the U.S. as early as the 1970s. However, they were initially seen as being replacements for seat belts, which not everyone wore at the time. Indeed, it wasn’t until the 1980s that airbags were used in tandem with seat belts to protect drivers and passengers. Despite their history, you might be surprised to discover when the first recorded accident between two cars equipped with airbags actually occurred.

In fact, that accident happened in 1990 in Virginia. It saw two 1989 Chrysler LaBarons hit each other head-on after one of the cars drifted onto the wrong side of the road. In each car the driver’s side airbag inflated, and despite an incredible amount of damage to both vehicles, the drivers walked away with only minor injuries.

Within the next few years, most new cars would offer airbags as at least an optional extra. Subsequent years would see safety further improved as the number of airbags inside the cabin started to increase. The first car sold in Europe to feature nine different airbags was the 2003 Toyota Avensis. Post-2010, though, safety precautions started to go further still.

In 2012 Volvo introduced the V40, the first car in the world to come with a pedestrian airbag on all models. This revolutionary piece of kit inflates on collision, protecting anyone outside the vehicle from hitting the hardest areas of the car. Unsurprisingly, in tests conducted by the European New Car Assessment Program, or EuroNCAP, the V40 was ranked as the safest vehicle for pedestrians.

In a short time, then, car safety has come a long way. And while too many people still lose their lives in road traffic accidents, some of these fatalities can be attributed in part to higher population numbers and there being more cars on the roads. But, while modern cars are much safer, what about the older vehicles that are still being driven?

That was the question the Australasian New Car Assessment Program, or ANCAP, wanted to answer. After all, while cars manufactured before 2000 make up just 20% of the vehicles on Australian roads, they’re caught up in more than 30% of the accidents.

So, ANCAP came up with a plan. It would take two cars – the same make and model but from different eras – and crash them into each other. In the end, the organization chose two Toyota Corollas; one from 1998 and the other from 2015. And there’s a very good reason why the Corolla was chosen.

That’s because in 1997 the Corolla was recognized as the world’s best-selling car model. Indeed, by mid-2013 Toyota had shifted over 40 million across 11 different generations of the car. And while the exact sales figures are difficult to pin down this makes the Corolla one of the most popular, and therefore the most common, cars on the world’s roads.

The experiment itself was a simple one. A crash test dummy was put in the driver’s seat of each car. Then the cars were fired towards one another at a speed of just under 40 mph, in what’s known as a frontal offset test. Designed to mimic a head-on collision between two vehicles, the results were staggering to say the least.

In fact, ANCAP CEO James Goodwin wasn’t being misleading when he said that the test “physically illustrates the benefits of newer, safer cars.” Simply glancing at the images of the crash shows just how much better the 2015 car fared than its 1998 predecessor. But while the images are terrifying, the statistics behind the staged crash are even more so.

The frontal offset test is a standard industry evaluation used by ANCAP to check the safety of new vehicles. And after the collision the two cars were examined to see how well they’d coped. As you might expect, the 2015 Corolla scored much higher in the test than its older sibling. But just how much higher is incredibly telling.

The 2015 model was awarded five stars for its performance in the test. Out of a possible 16 points the ANCAP can award, the car was given a score of 12.93. That’s in stark contrast to the mark that the 1998 model received. Researchers conducted identical tests on it following the crash, and the results make dismal reading.

In fact, whereas the 2015 Corolla received the highest number of stars, the 1998 model received the lowest – none. Out of the 16 points that it could have garnered, the car mustered a paltry 0.4. Furthermore, tests conducted on the dummy inside the car revealed some even more serious insights into what would have happened had the crash occurred in real life.

Readings taken from the dummy in the 1998 Corolla showed that had a real person been driving the car, he or she would likely have been seriously hurt. Indeed, the report stated that there was “an extremely high risk of serious head, chest and leg injury to the driver,” much of which can be attributed to the car suffering “catastrophic structural failure” during the collision. Clearly, it would have been very difficult for the driver to walk away from such an impact.

But ANCAP didn’t just reveal the statistics behind the safety of older cars. It also explained just how many of these cars are still on the road today. Cars made before 2000 are involved in 33% of fatal crashes in Australia, whereas cars made after 2011 are involved in just 13%. And according to Goodwin, that’s incredibly worrying.

“It is concerning [that] the rate of fatal crashes is four times higher for older vehicles than for new vehicles,” Goodwin said in ANCAP’s press release. Moreover, it’s a trend that’s mirrored in New Zealand. There, the average age of a car is 14.3 years, but the average age of a car involved in a fatal crash is almost 16 years.

Another worrying fact is that it’s often the drivers most at risk – the very young or the very old – who are behind the wheel of older, more vulnerable cars. “The outcomes of this test are stark,” Goodwin added, “and the automotive, finance and insurance industries can play a part to assist in encouraging people into newer, safer cars.”

Moreover, the test that ANCAP performed is a strong reminder that, while car safety has come a long way, a lot of the vehicles on the road right now could well be incredibly dangerous. As Goodwin says, “Safety is not a luxury and we want everyone to remain safe on the road, so consumers should look for the safest car they can afford and the safest car that suits their needs.”