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Activities of the New Car Assessment Program in the United States
Technical Paper
976194
Sector:
Language:
English
Abstract
In 1978, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
began assessing the occupant protection capabilities of new cars by
conducting high-speed frontal barrier crash tests. This New Car
Assessment Program has primary goals to provide consumers with a
measure of the relative safety potential of automobiles and to
establish market forces which encourage vehicle manufacturers to
design higher levels of safety into their vehicles.
The New Car Assessment Program crash test conditions closely
resemble actual frontal crashes that result in fatalities or
serious injuries. In these controlled crash tests, the levels of
potential injury are assessed by measurements taken from two
anthropomorphic test devices (dummies) that simulate 50th
percentile adult males. Biomechanical data have been used to
develop injury risk functions which relate the dummy measurements
to injury probabilities. Beginning with the model year (MY) 1994
vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
adopted the use of these injury risk functions to develop a
simplified star rating data format which could provide consumers
with easily understandable vehicle safety performance
information.
Notable improvements in occupant safety as measured by the dummy
responses have occurred during the history of the program. About a
one-third reduction in the probability of a life-threatening injury
has occurred in the NCAP passenger cars (PCs as measured by the
controlled crash test results. Light trucks, vans and sport utility
vehicles (LTVs) are noted to have injury probabilities higher than
those measured in the PCs. However, in recent years, improvements
in NCAP LTV performance have led to about a 25 percent reduction in
the calculated probability of AIS ≥ 4 injuries.
Studies have established that a significant correlation exists
between the serious injury probabilities as predicted by the test
scores and actual fatality risks on the road. When dividing the
vehicles into "lower risk" and "higher risk"
performers as defined by the injury probabilities from the NCAP
tests, restrained drivers of the "lower risk" cars are as
much as 30 percent less likely to receive fatal injuries when
compared to restrained drivers of the "higher risk" cars
in severe frontal crashes. These results when compared to the test
results from the rapidly increasing number of airbag-equipped
vehicles indicate that the trend of improving occupant protection
in severe frontal crashes is expected to continue.
The upgrade of Federal Motor Vehicle Standard (FMVSS) No. 214,
Side Impact Protection, to require a dynamic test provides the
opportunity for the expansion of NCAP into side-impact protection.
Crash conditions for this expansion have been determined and test
results from higher speed crashes have been compared to results
from FMVSS No. 214 test results.
In 1995 and 1996, The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
(IIHS) conducted frontal offset crash tests on PCs and LTVs. These
data provide the first comparison of an extensive group of U.S.
vehicles which have been tested in both full-frontal and
frontal-offset crashes. The results support the position that the
full-frontal test is a more stringent evaluation of the restraint
system performance. However, due to more intrusion, the probability
of lower leg injury will be better determined in the offset
crashes. By testing in both crash modes, as the Road and Traffic
Authority of New South Wales is doing, a more complete assessment
of vehicle safety is possible.
Two studies on consumer information have recently been
completed. The "NHTSA 1995 Customer Satisfaction Survey"
provides national estimates of the public's attitudes,
opinions, and behavior relative to traffic safety. The
Transportation Research Board's study "Shopping for
Safety: Providing Consumer Safety Information," broadly
examined motor vehicle consumer needs and methods of communicating
this information to the public. NHTSA is closely reviewing these
studies relative to NCAP and consumer information activities.