Star Wars: Are Five-Star Rated Cars Really Ready for the Roads?

LONDON, Sept. 17, 2008 - To produce a safe car that protects its occupants during an accident is every manufacturer’s dream. One of the reasons for this is that road accidents cause as many as one million causalities around the world and 170,000 casualties in Europe alone every year, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates. Enhanced vehicle safety becomes imperative towards achieving improved road transport. Moreover, safety has become a key selling point, driving new car sales in Europe and other huge car markets like the United States and Japan. The social benefits accrued by having safe cars driven by consumers is one of the major reasons why bodies like the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro-NCAP) [a consortium of different agencies] publishes test results based on in-depth research as to how each car model performs during various circumstances like frontal and side collisions. These independent tests are aimed at providing information to the general public on the safety performance of new vehicles to help consumers choose safer cars. However recently, ADAC, an independent automotive club in Europe (a partner in Euro-NCAP) tested a five-star rated Renault Laguna for frontal impact at 80km/hr above the required 64km/hr and the results were surprising. The passengers were exposed to greater risks at 80km/hr as opposed to 64km/hr. Are five-star rated cars any safer than their counterparts when it comes to real world crashes?

Consistency or Compliance?

The frontal impact tests are carried out at a speed of 64km/hr. This speed, according to accident studies, covers a large proportion of serious and fatal injuries in Europe. Some of the critical reasoning for doing tests at this speed is because it improves general crashworthiness, fewer chest and head injuries, mainly for small-to-medium sized car occupants and others. All the vehicle manufacturers are tailoring the safety performance of their vehicles to pass Euro-NCAP tests with maximum points. However, the German ADAC decided to conduct frontal impact tests at 80km/hr, to deduce whether change in testing conditions leads to drastic changes in safety performance.

The tests revealed that under increased frontal impact testing speed by a modest 15km/hr, the risk of serious injury to the driver as well as the car increased dramatically. During the test, the deformation of the entire vehicle was severe compared to crash tests performed at lower speeds.

Need for a Change?

The Euro-NCAP ratings were not considered credible by vehicle manufacturers initially. The argument was that the test did not correlate exactly with real life crashes. But in ten years’ time, Euro-NCAP has established itself as a credible and independent source for crash protection levels offered in cars for consumers around the world. The crash tests are performed at speeds greater than statutory requirements around the world. By doing so, Euro-NCAP is encouraging vehicle manufacturers to exceed the minimum statutory requirements.

ADAC pushed it a little further by determining how cars perform at 80km/hr. They have confirmed the fact that the vehicle manufacturers are meticulously tailoring their cars to perform well at 64km/hr but not even a little above 64km/hr. The average speed of 64km/hr is already outdated for some countries where the average accident speed band exceeds the statutory speed limit. According to the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) only Luxemburg, France and Portugal, which have reduced road deaths from 2001 to 2007 by 38%, 43% and 42%, respectively, will be in a position to reach the European target of halving road causalities, whereas other members are estimated to reach the target between 2011 and 2030. Road causalities in 2007 for countries such as Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland rose compared to 2006. This worrying trend of high rates of causalities in Europe even after such stringent tests, confirms the fact that there is need for change in testing criteria and evaluation for future cars, based on reliable estimates on average accident speeds.

Euro-NCAP – Moving towards Combined Active and Passive Safety Evaluation?

Euro-NCAP is all set to revise the rating criteria for future tests. In essence, even though all the tests will remain the same, there will be an overall score in the future for all the tests. Therefore, if the car has to score five stars, it has to perform pedestrian protection, an area where many manufacturers are not scoring high points. This move will encourage manufacturers to improve their pedestrian protection performance in order to take away high overall scores.

Pedestrian protection is one area where even premium car makers have faired poorly. Even though BMW X5 and Mercedes Benz M class score five stars in adult protection tests, they score a single star for pedestrian protection. This move to introduce overall rating will encourage manufacturers to improve pedestrian protection characteristics of cars. It will also help consumers choose a car based on overall safety performance than just based on adult or child protection alone.

Active Safety for Euro-NCAP Evaluation

Active safety systems like driver warning and collision avoidance systems can actively mitigate accidents from happening or reduce the severity of the crash. Euro-NCAP will consider active safety systems like ESP, which will be part of future NCAP ratings in Europe. It has the potential to reduce up to 2,500 lives annually. The current system of evaluating cars just based on a combination of adult and children occupant protection systems, must give way to appraising cars based on a combination of active and passive safety systems installed in them.

The present system of evaluation is lopsided because it only informs the consumer about how safe the car is in the event of accidents but does not take into account the ability of the car’s preventive safety systems to keep accidents from happening in the first place. This is one of the reasons why Euro-NCAP will consider ESP as a part of the Safety Assist rating system, which in the future will eventually consider other safety active safety devices like Lane Departure Warning (LDW) and Blind spot Detection (BSD), capable of making the car and its passengers very safe. In order to get there, ESP evaluation and introduction of Safety Assist in the overall evaluation is a step in the right direction.

By leveraging on the credibility of the NCAP ratings in Europe and ADAC in Germany, it is possible to achieve the EU goal of halving the fatalities in Europe, by pushing for preventive safety system evaluation. By doing so, Euro-NCAP can not only raise the awareness of active safety systems, which is currently low among consumers, but can also set a higher benchmark for car makers, in terms of overall safety requirements expected from them if a higher safety rating has to be achieved.

European Legislations - Additional burden on automakers?

European Union is demanding more and more from the automakers. After actively mandating the use of passive safety technologies, it has set its sight on preventive safely technologies. It has mandated the use of Brake Assist system (BAS) from 2009 and Electronic stability Program (ESP) for all new car models from 2012, which will be followed by Lane Departure Warning and Advanced Emergency Braking (AEB) for heavy-duty vehicles. At the same time, Euro-NCAP is also tightening its screws on testing and evaluation standards. In the light of such developments, it is becoming clear that the automakers will not find the going easy because they have to manage additional responsibilities with respect to CO2 emissions. Even though these developments are a step in the right direction that will bring increased safety to the European roads, end-consumers in Europe have to pay more than 500 Euros on their future cars, in a market that has historically been price sensitive. For the automakers, it will be a multifaceted undertaking, meeting the end user requirement at an optimum price at the same time meeting the increased demands from the legislative bodies in order to avoid hefty penalties on emission standards.

Towards Preventive Safety

The European Union (EU) flagship programmes, like e-safety have continuously lobbied for installing active safety systems like ESP, Brake Assist systems (BAS), and Advanced Emergency Braking (AEB) with a combined life saving potential of close to 10,000 lives every year. It has also mandated the use of such systems in future cars and heavy trucks. But currently, all these systems remain optional equipment for high-end models and it is hard to ensure that Euro-NCAP and ADAC will be successful in imposing preventive safety applications requirements for their future tests. The task for Euro-NCAP will be a daunting one because many advanced driver assistance systems come with liability problems for their makers if the system fails, which is one of the reasons why it may defer introducing these systems for car safety performance evaluation unless the systems are perfected. For the car makers, who are grappling with multiple responsibilities such as emission reduction, meeting additional safety standards may be even more difficult. Euro-NCAP has been successful with respect to passive safety installation, but their active safety successes can make the European roads safer than they have ever been.

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