Crash test criteria come under attack

By Russell Williamson

Prestige carmakers in Europe have slammed NCAP crash tests as misleading and inappropriate for the advancement of automotive safety.

The condemnation of EuroNCAP follows the release of the results of the second round of testing in which Mercedes C180, BMW 3-Series, Audi A4 and Saab 900 only received two out of four stars.

The EuroNCAP is similar to the New Car Assessment Program that is conducted in Australia, Japan and the United States. It aims to provide consumers with independent information about the crashworthiness of new vehicles.

NCAP crash tests new vehicles and rates them according to a formula based on the structural deformation of the car and injuries suffered by the occupant.

The tests have previously been criticized by automotive companies around the world as being too simplistic -- only one car is crashed to determine the rating -- and too far removed from the performance of vehicles in actual crashes.

Speaking at the launch of the new A-Class in Brussels last week, Mercedes chief safety engineer Ingo Kallina said while the principle of NCAP was a good idea, the testing criteria and subsequent ratings system were misleading.

He said the tests did not reflect real world crashes and went against the direction automotive safety was headed in.

Kallina said the frontal test, which uses a car crashing into a deformable barrier 40 percent offset at 64kmh, favored cars with stiff frontal structures, while present thinking was leading safety engineers from companies like Mercedes and Saab to develop softer, deformable front-end structures.

He said while a stiffer front end provided good self- protection, it increased the chances of injuries for other passengers in multi-car crashes; what would only be a minor injury with a deformable front end becomes a serious injury.

It was no longer acceptable for carmakers to simply build cars that protected only their own occupants, Kallina said.

Manufacturers had to look at the real world crashes and build cars that reduced the rate of injuries and fatalities overall.

This has prompted carmakers like Mercedes and Saab to use more car-to-car crash tests in addition to barrier tests.

It was this trend towards softer front structures that was the reason for the four carmakers' poor results in the NCAP, as the cars were designed to have a degree of frontal deformation that was deemed by NCAP to exceed an acceptable level for occupant protection.

Kallina said the simplistic nature of the test, comparative rating and its publication could result in carmakers having to resort to stiffer front-end structures in order to be seen to do well in the tests.

This could mean carmakers would build cars to pass crash tests rather than being engineered to improve the safety for all road users.

"What is the public perception if Mercedes only gets two stars?" Kallina said.

"Can we survive if we don't get four stars?"

Kallina said that in addition to misleading the public about the safety levels of certain cars, the test criteria was seriously deficient in its scope.

The biggest problem with testing was the limited information used to determine the rating.

Kallina said there were myriad of factors that could influence how a car rated in a crash, and it was only by studying real world crashes that a realistic safety rating could be developed.

He said it was worrisome that no carmaker, many of whom have substantial accident research operations, was involved in developing the NCAP criteria and ratings.

In response to this, Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes together with two German government authorities and two universities have worked on producing a realistic means of providing safety assessment information to the public for the past two years.

The draft report, written by Karl Langwieder of the association of German Insurance companies and Brian Fildes of Monash University in Melbourne, highlighted a number of high priority critical factors needed to establish a reliable and valid safety rating.

These include vehicle mass or size, crash and injury severity, type of crash, age and sex of the driver and whether the driver of the car was at fault.

None of these factors are included in the NCAP ratings.

The report recommended the setting up of a European or international Safety Rating Advisory Committee to process the development of quality safety rating criteria.

Discussions with the European Commission to determine the best means of establishing such a committee are planned. The group also plans a third workshop this year to review the progress of the previous two, and set targets and priorities for the future.