The enhanced U.S. NCAP: five years later

The U.S. New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) encourages vehicle manufacturers to make safety improvements to their vehicles through its award-winning consumer information-based 5-Star Safety Ratings Program. Occupant injury readings have decreased and star ratings have generally improved since the program was enhanced in the 2011 Model Year (MY). This paper summarizes vehicle crash test results for the five MYs since the program was last upgraded to demonstrate how quickly vehicles have been redesigned to achieve high ratings under the more stringent requirements. As a result, most vehicles are achieving 4- or 5-star ratings. Though there are still vehicles the agency has tested that do not achieve the highest ratings, the performance of the majority of vehicles tested under the enhanced program is excellent. This sets the stage for the agency to begin exploring the possibility of making additional changes to the current program to spur even further vehicle safety improvements through market forces and consumer demand. The NCAP’s crash test data (specifically, occupant injury data) and star ratings derived from those data will be used throughout this study. Occupant performance from the first year of the enhanced program will be compared to more recent results. A comparative analysis of paired data for vehicles that have been tested and retested under the enhanced NCAP will also be shown. These analyses will serve to demonstrate the effectiveness of the program in encouraging vehicle manufacturers to make immediate design changes that improve the occupant protection afforded by their vehicles.