Euro NCAP adds Autonomous Emergency Braking assessment for 2014

Pedestrian protection thresholds become increasingly demanding

2013/01/17

Summary

Weighting factors between areas of Euro NCAP In June 2012, Euro NCAP that assesses automobile safety in Europe, announced changes to its assessment items in 2013 and onward. Autonomous Emergency Braking and Lane Keep Assist systems, said to contribute to increasing vehicle safety, are new assessment items in 2014. At the same time, the weighting factors of safety assist systems in rating the availability of advanced safety equipment will be increased from 10% to 20%. The child occupant protection protocol in 2015 and onward will include 6-year old and 10-year old child dummies using booster seats and the rear seatbelts to increase the back seat safety. Autonomous emergency braking for pedestrian protection will be added to the assessment items in 2016.

 Since Euro NCAP's new assessment scheme was introduced in 2009, the safety requirements have become more challenging, step by step, through 2012. The total rating system is designed so that high overall score can be obtained only when a vehicle gets high ratings in four areas including adult occupant protection (AOP), child occupant protection (COP), pedestrian protection (PP) and safety assist (SA). The overall rating scores for the highest five-star rating and the threshold in each area have been raised in steps. The five-star threshold for PP, in particular, has been increased substantially from 25% to 60%. The crash test results from 2012 suggest a significant increase in the models with 60% or greater rating in PP area and indicate that OEMs have been making special efforts to improve the PP performance of their cars.

 In addition to conducting crash tests, Euro NCAP is presenting "NCAP Advanced Rewards" to distinctively advanced driver assist systems to spread automotive safety technologies to consumers in a more easy-to-understand manner. In 2012, such rewards were presented to autonomous emergency braking systems, lane keeping assist systems, secondary collision avoidance systems, pre-crash seatbelt systems, autonomous emergency call systems, etc. Quite a number of them, such as the autonomous emergency braking and lane keeping assist systems, are added to the list of assessment items.

Related Reports: The future of car-mounted camera-based systems (Jan. 2013)
Equipment on new European models (1) (Oct. 2012), (2) (Oct. 2012)
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