THE AUTOMOTIVE YEAR: Gripe of the year 2014

It was November 12, and I had lasagne for lunch. But things went from good to baffling in the afternoon when the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) revealed a revised version of its Ratings Road Map.

ANCAP is the nation's peak independent automotive safety authority which crash tests cars and then rates them for consumers. Five stars means the car can protect its occupants very well in certain types of collisions, while one star means that every interior surface may as well be laced with arsenic.

At least, that's what five stars used to mean… In effect, the changes ANCAP has announced threaten to completely change its charter from a crash-testing authority to a technology-testing authority.

Add into the mix the differences between the Euro NCAP and local ANCAP scoring systems, which rate cars very differently (though from January 1, 2015 will gradually begin to come into line with each other) and the recipe becomes completely perplexing.

On one hand you've got ANCAP saying that vehicles without rear-seat curtain airbags are bad, but Euro NCAP gives some of these cars a five-star rating. So if ANCAP uses Euro NCAP results in future, will those cars automatically become 'safer'?

Take the Renault Captur, which scored five stars in a 2013 Euro NCAP test, but would have been a four-star car if was launched here this year because it lacks rear side curtain airbags. If they're not fitted by 2016, when Euro NCAP also makes them a prerequisite for five stars, the car will revert to four-star. Clear?

Crash test ratings are already confusing enough. Now ANCAP is instituting a date-stamp protocol to advise consumers when a crash test took place, to account for the tightening of scoring systems changing at different rates in Australia and Europe.

The result is there's no longer an apples-with-apples comparison of models crash-tested at different times, let alone models tested by ANCAP and ENCAP, or models in different segments.

Between 2015 and 2017, ANCAP aims to more closely align itself with the European NCAP authority, then in 2018 will mirror Euro NCAP. By this time most of the focus will have moved away from how a car deforms and protects occupants in a crash to instead focus on the effectiveness of its crash avoidance technology.

The boffins say it's all about 'safety assist technologies' and the range of physical crash tests will be broadened to test them. But could a car made from rolled-oats and marmalade but fitted with an awesome pre-collision and autonomous emergency braking system be rated as five-star safe?

We just don't know. And it's why we're griping.

ANCAP doesn't seem to be able to provide a credible answer when asked what’s going to be important to attaining a five-star safety rating in future.

ANCAP CEO Nicholas Clarke says automatic crash avoidance systems, such as the slow-speed autonomous emergency braking (AEB) are "a real life-saver" that will put "more downward pressure" on the road toll. But he admits "there's been a shift in focus," confirming that: "Now it's all about crash avoidance."

"Avoiding a crash is better than having one..."

No argument there, but not all collisions will be avoided, so consumers still need to know what level of structural integrity a given car offers so they can make an informed choice.

Clearly ANCAP, which will become less relevance once it adopts Euro NCAP's test protocols in full in 2018, thinks we should be aligned with Europe and we agree.

But before ANCAP fully embraces Euro NCAP's test regime in three years, the impending 'dual result' system to be used between 2015 and 2017 will make crash safety ratings as clear as mud for the average punter.

I've just re-read the official 'road map' explanation to better understand it, but it's about as decipherable as an episode of Twin Peaks.

And so for the next few years confusion will reign over safety ratings, where and when they originated, what level of testing was undertaken and if they're even relevant any more.

Oh how we wish life was as simple as a lasagne and up to five safety stars.