NCAP: Safety Ratings in Safe Hands

Although enormous forces are acting on the race car’s structure, the fragile human body within is protected from injury by state-of-the-art automotive architecture. And yet just a few decades ago, such accidents would undoubtedly have been fatal. In terms of design, a standard car has nothing in common with an F1racer. But our understanding of the factors necessary for a driver’s survival, plus the enormous gains in computer processing power, have dramatically improved vehicle safety on the streets.

Back in 1985, annual road traffic accidents resulted in some 10,000 fatalities in Germany alone. But by 2015, the number of traffic fatalities had fallen by almost two thirds to just under 3,500 – even though there were almost twice as many vehicles on the road.

The U.S. saw a similar trend: over the same period, the number of motor vehicles in the country rose by around 100 million, whereas the number of road deaths fell by some 20 percent. One of the institutions that made a significant contribution to this trend was the New Car Assessment Program, better known as NCAP.

What may seem like a single consumer protection organization spanning the globe is actually made up of 10 independent rating agencies that specialize in assessing the safety-related features of new automobiles. The individual agencies were founded between 1978 (U.S. NCAP) and 2006 (China’s C-NCAP). They developed test protocols to standardize the crash properties of cars. Tests focus on vehicle occupants; the safer they are, the higher the number of points awarded. Crash-test ratings take the form of stars, with a maximum score of five stars. And nowadays, vehicles with low ratings are almost impossible to sell.

However, test criteria are not identical in every country – and never have been. Each NCAP organization sets different priorities based on regional needs and the most common types of accidents there. Thus U.S. accident statistics show significantly more single-occupant accidents due to, for example, solo drivers becoming tired, accidentally veering off the endlessly long highways and rolling their vehicles. That’s why vehicle rollovers are an important part of the U.S. NCAP test.
In Europe, accidents involving other road users are more common, so Euro NCAP test scenarios focus more closely on them.

But NCAP organizations also help inspire engineers and legislators. For example, NCAP has gradually paid more and more attention to electronic driver-assist systems such as the electronic stability program (ESP), extending the scope of assessments beyond mere crash tests. The underlying premise is logical: vehicles that are easier to control are less likely to end up in critical situations. Euro NCAP started awarding points for ESP systems in 2009; just two years later, ESP systems were legally required in all new cars. Now NCAP officials publish roadmaps indicating which safety criteria they will be evaluating in the future. By publishing these roadmaps far in advance, they give auto manufacturers and suppliers plenty of time to respond.

Front-seat passengers are also receiving more attention. ZF is developing special airbags for drivers and their front-seat companions that have very little in common with simple “bags of air.” For the above-mentioned Oblique Moving Deformable Barrier (OMDB) crash test, ZF engineers developed a system of front and curtain airbags with special V-shaped and U-shaped chambers. “The special geometry covers the area around the A-pillar and instrument panel, preventing heads from hitting these components,” says Dirk Schultz. “And front-seat passengers are protected from extreme movements forward and left by our ‘parallel cell front seat passenger airbag’, which widens out toward the center of the vehicle. Both airbag systems are also designed to cushion the rolling motion of the head when it impacts,” adds Schultz, Vice President Global Engineering Airbags & Inflators at ZF.

So what’s happening in China? “The Chinese version of NCAP won’t simply follow European or U.S. standards. It will set its own priorities for the future by focusing on passive safety, pedestrian safety, active safety – including automatic emergency braking – and fuel efficiency, not to mention overvoltage protection in hybrid and all-electric e-vehicles,” says Chris Wu, Engineering Director Occupant Safety Systems at ZF China. In contrast to India and China, sophisticated safety technology has already reached the economy segment in Europe. The new Ford Fiesta, for example, contains 15 advanced driver-assist systems – features that just a few years ago were only found in luxury cars.