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Comment by Daniel Cotterill

SAFETY is good. No one is about to argue against work to reduce deaths and injuries caused by road accidents.

However, it is also clear that the safety ratings conferred on passenger vehicles are a muddle of ever changing standards and inconsistent application of the protocols surrounding the testing regime.

The Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) claims to be Australasia’s leading independent vehicle safety advocate.

According to ANCAP it provides consumers with transparent advice and information on the level of occupant and pedestrian protection provided by different vehicle models.

The world’s vehicle manufacturers are, by and large, producing safer vehicles each year that boast an ever-increasing range of active and passive safety features to prevent deaths and minimise injuries.

But ANCAP’s ability to keep the testing of the latest vehicles understandable to the public, and relevant to the tests that have gone before, must be seriously questioned.

Say, for example, you are in the market for a second-hand car. The particular model scored four out of five stars when it was tested in 2010, but what would it score now?

Who knows? There is a date stamp to tell consumers when a vehicle was tested but they are left to their own devices to figure out what that date stamp means.

Most people could be expected to deduce that an older car probably isn’t going to be as safe as a newer one. But does the average car buyer have any idea about the raft of safety technologies introduced since 2010 and the changes to a safety star rating that would result?

There is a seemingly obvious way to fix this problem. All the local crash test data is on file at ANCAP. How hard could it be to work back through the crash test catalogue and give a second rating to each vehicle based on the current standards?

For example, ‘car model XYZ, four star safety when tested in 2010, would score a two star safety rating in 2017’.

While there is certainly an amount of work involved in that process, such a move would be of great assistance to clarity – and it would allow people to make a direct comparison between cars based on today’s standards no matter when the older cars were tested.

This process of re-evaluation would continue each time the testing protocols were updated until such time as a vehicle scored no stars.

Much as I would like to claim this as an original idea, it has been the subject of discussion amongst several senior motoring writers and various car company executives for a while now.

This issue came up again in the GoAuto newsroom recently when several journalists were discussing the crash test result for a commercial van and its people-mover variant.

The LDV G10 first went on sale in Australia in 2015. So it was tested and scored by ANCAP in accordance with its 2015 protocols. All fair enough so far.

Then someone asked, ‘hang on, the Mustang went on sale here in 2015 but that was tested to ANCAP’s much stricter 2017 protocols. So we checked all the dates and, yes, the Mustang did go on sale here in 2015, and, yes, it was tested in line with 2017 protocols – scoring a sensational (in bad news terms) two-star result.

Who knew the Mustang was less safe than a Chinese delivery van that scored three stars?

We couldn’t figure it out so we asked ANCAP: “Can you tell us please why the LDV G10 first sold in Australia in 2015 was tested to 2015 safety requirements while the Ford Mustang, also first sold in Australia in 2015 was tested to 2017 requirements?”

ANCAP’s response is as follows: “As we transition to a common test and assessment regime with Euro NCAP – which will be applied to all ANCAP ratings from 1 January 2018.

Some ratings during this transition are published to ANCAP criteria (vehicles tested locally), and others to Euro NCAP criteria (vehicles tested in Europe)”.

“The Rating Year criteria applied to vehicles tested locally is determined based on the year in which the vehicle was first available to our market. When rating a vehicle that has been tested by Euro NCAP, the Rating Year criteria applied relates to the year in which the vehicle was tested/rated by Euro NCAP.

“With the adoption of a common Australasian / European protocol next year, the Rating Year applied by ANCAP to all vehicles will be the year in which the vehicle was rated.”
Really?

We think that means that ANCAP is convinced it either has fixed or is on the way to fixing the issue.

But we are not so sure. The fact that a room full of specialist motoring journalists, whose job it is to know and write all about cars, cannot be sure of how the ratings work and what they mean suggests to us that ordinary car buyers will still be mightily confused.

Few doubt the good work that ANCAP does. Their technical expertise and dedication to improving road safety is admirable.

What a shame to see the value of their important, life-saving message diluted through lack of clarity.


ANCAP chief executive responds

GOAUTONEWS Premium offered ANCAP the opportunity to respond to our opinion piece. The statement below is from ANCAP’s chief executive officer James Goodwin.

“The datestamp is an important element of our rating system and we are working hard to communicate to consumers the need to not only look for 5 stars, but for the latest date stamp to ensure safety currency.”

“We all acknowledge advancements in technology, and consumers are astute – you wouldn’t compare an iPhone 7 with an iPhone 4 or say Windows 10 with Windows 7 and the same applies with vehicle safety in comparing contemporary competitors.”

“Certain policy positions were determined under the previous administration, with the agreement of vehicle brands, which has seen a longer period of ‘transition’ than would be considered ideal, but in no instance has there been an inconsistent application of these policies.”

“With the Ford Mustang, an ANCAP rating was high on our agenda as it was the highest selling ‘unrated’ model however we were unable to acquire test vehicles due to the limited availability of cars, and Ford were not open to providing them. Had they, the Mustang would have been tested to the 2015 criteria, so this was a missed opportunity for Ford.

“ANCAP has been working hard on its alignment with Euro NCAP to provide Australian and New Zealand consumers with a stronger rating system – one which is moving at the same pace as that of safety technology advancements.

“We have acknowledged the transitional arrangements are less than ideal from a consumer perspective and in less than five months from now we will have a unified approach to rating year determination which extends not only to Australia and New Zealand, but across the European Union.”

Comment by Daniel Cotterill

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