Euro NCAP retains five-star scoring

Euro NCAP has announced that four of the five cars most recently tested for crash safety have scored the maximum five-star rating. Yet none of the five scored better than two stars for pedestrian safety.

The European crash-safety testing organisation is pleased that so many cars attain the holy grail of adult occupant safety, but it's less impressed by the apparently cavalier attitude of car manufacturers towards those other road users, pedestrians.

As it stands, the Euro NCAP system allows vehicles to score a five-star safety rating (which reads well in the showroom), even if the vehicle is no better than average at protecting pedestrians from harm. The disparity is quite plain, according to the organisation. Ten years after its establishment, Euro NCAP finds that 97 per cent of cars tested last year scored a five-star rating for adult occupant protection, but not one achieved four stars for pedestrian safety.

From 2009, Euro NCAP will adjust the safety rating methodology to eliminate this loophole. In a slightly ingenuous remark lifted from the press release announcing the latest results, Euro NCAP observed that "consumers are interested in the safety offered to all occupants and also to other road users when they are choosing a new car". Maybe in Europe vehicle owners care about pedestrians...

"I am delighted that more and more manufacturers are achieving five stars in our crash-tests, but it is imperative that Euro NCAP continues to set higher benchmarks for car makers to aspire to," said Michiel van Ratingen, Secretary General for the organisation.

"Our new rating system will do this. I have no doubt that manufacturers will step up to the challenge, just as they did when we first started. The creation of new technologies means enhanced safety performance and a potential reduction of fatalities on our roads. We intend to reward those manufacturers that make this their ultimate goal."

Euro NCAP is also following the trail blazed by ANCAP in Australia, considering "the safety potential of advanced driver assistance technologies such as electronic stability control".

The five cars tested in the latest round of testing were Daihatsu Cuore, Hyundai i30, Lancia Delta, Renault Koleos and the Mercedes Benz ML class, with just the Daihatsu scoring four stars for adult occupant safety.

The changes presaged by Euro NCAP indicate that in the current regime, a car with average or mediocre safety is still likely to rate four stars, so the five-star scale is increasingly pointless, as it stands. If every car rates five stars for safety, is there any value or merit in five stars any more? The conundrum for Euro NCAP is that with changes to the testing method, cars that historically scored five stars for safety, won't necessarily compare with cars rated at five stars under the new testing method, although the organisation already distinguishes between two different testing methods for pedestrian safety ratings scored prior to December 31, 2001 and subsequently.

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