The recognised authority on car safety, Euro NCAP, will have tougher testing from next year, writes Daniel Attwood
NEWSANALYSIS SAFETY TESTING:IN JUST over a decade, Euro NCAP has become the recognised authority on new car safety in Europe. Its crash-test results are the safety benchmark for the Continent's car buyers. Without its maximum five-star adult occupant safety rating, new cars will fail to attract buyers increasingly concerned about protecting themselves, their families and other road users.
Such has been the impact of the independent crash tests on the car-buying public that manufacturers know a low rating will adversely affect sales. They therefore go to extraordinary lengths - in some cases to redesign safety equipment and upgrade vehicles already on the road - to ensure a higher rating.
But critics accuse manufacturers of designing new car safety solely to achieve maximum Euro NCAP scores for adult occupant safety, rather than taking a holistic approach.
This has been made easier because the independent test facilities are often also used by carmakers. "They have taken our safety protocols and developed their vehicles accordingly," Dr Michiel Van Ratingen, secretary-general of Euro NCAP admits: "Our requirements have become their design targets."
But carmakers have concentrated on five-star adult occupancy protection and often ignored other areas.
For example, earlier this year, four of the five new cars tested received the maximum five-star adult occupant safety award, but none achieved higher than a two-star score for pedestrian safety.
In the most recent batch of tests, none of the 12 cars tested was awarded higher than a three-star pedestrian protection rating.
"Euro NCAP is concerned that many manufacturers set out to achieve high scores for adult occupant protection to attract consumers, whilst compromising safety investment in other areas," says Euro NCAP.
Now the tests have been redesigned, making them tougher and more comprehensive.
From February 2009, a new single five-star vehicle safety rating will replace the current star ratings.
No car will be able to achieve the maximum rating without passing an array of tests that will consider not only adult occupant protection, but also that of child occupants and pedestrians and a new category of "safety assist", which looks at the manufacturer's use of crash-avoidance technology, such as electronic stability control (ESC).
All of these elements will be combined into the single rating, making it much more difficult for a car to achieve the maximum five stars.
Euro NCAP believes this will provide the simplest and clearest advice to motorists about the overall safety of a vehicle.
However, the carmakers disagree, saying the new regime risks confusing motorists. They say that there is "over representation" in the new rating system for areas such as pedestrian safety and complain of the lack of a single test regime.
"There needs to be a global protocol," argues Sigrid de Vries, director communications at ACEA, the European carmakers' representative association, who points out that having one test in Europe and another in the US and yet another in the Far East leads to "indirect cost consequences" for car buyers - something that will become more apparent when the new Euro NCAP test come into force.
From next year, if a car does not have ESC fitted as standard, it will not get five stars.
While upcoming European legislation will force manufacturers to fit ESC as standard from 2012, Euro NCAP's move is likely to ensure new cars have the safety system fitted as standard long before then.
Euro NCAP also points out that by 2010, if a car gets lower than three stars for pedestrian protection, it will not get the five-star overall rating. The carmakers, however, complain that, while they are being told to take a holistic approach to safety, this is not happening elsewhere.
"Pedestrian safety is very important but there also needs to be improvement in road infrastructure and in law enforcement and driver education," says de Vries.
Cars that fail new whiplash tests will also be unable to achieve five stars. The first batch of whiplash test proved that carmakers still have a long way to go before they get five stars again.
Of the 25 front seats tested, only five passed. Eight were rated as "poor" and three of these are currently fitted in cars that have been awarded the maximum five-star safety rating.
"There is no doubt that this new overall rating will provide clear challenges to industry," says Van Ratingen.
However, the new rating system also poses a dilemma - a car such as the Ford Kuga, which received five stars in the current system, would not receive such a high rating next year, as it failed the new whiplash test.
To try to address this, Euro NCAP will reassess some cars launched in 2007 and 2008. "We are going to be looking closely at cars that have obviously very bad pedestrian performance but excellent adult occupancy ratings," explains Van Ratingen.
ACEA says there still needs to be more discussion before such retrospective testing goes ahead. "The industry is in favour of clear comparisons so consumers have a like-for-like comparison," says de Vries. "But who will finance this retesting? This still needs to be resolved."
With these negotiations still ongoing, what is clear is that not all cars in the showrooms next year will have been re-tested, meaning five stars may not actually mean the safest car you can buy.