James Goodwin
THE Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) crash-testing program will change its safety scoring system in 2018 to take new technology into account.
According to ANCAP chief executive James Goodwin, cars are not just going to be rewarded for protecting occupants with high structural integrity in the vehicle body.
From 2018, vehicles will be awarded more for having crash avoidance technology, such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB), and structural integrity will provide a smaller proportion of the overall points rating.
Mr Goodwin told a recent Victorian professional development forum for the Australasian Fleet Managers Association (AFMA): “We have almost reached that point that structurally the cars are pretty much as safe as they can get. So now we are moving the goalposts even further.”
“We are changing the weighting of safety features and how we score a car so that, if a vehicle has the technology that helps you avoid getting into a crash in the first place, it will be rewarded,” he said.
“The message to you today is that we need to start asking for that technology right now, so that the car manufacturers will introduce it.”
Mr Goodwin said autonomous emergency braking (AEB) would be given a high priority – it will be mandatory before a vehicle can receive a five-star rating – because it has been found to be very effective in preventing crashes.
He said a study in Europe showed that AEB reduced rear-end crashes by 38 per cent and a study in Adelaide estimated that it could reduce fatalities by 25 per cent by reducing impact speeds.
“We need you to ask for this (AEB) when you are buying cars,” he said
He said that AEB was standard in only 16 of the top 100 selling cars in Australia, and available as an option in another 34 with 50 cars not offering the technology in any form.
“The Toyota Corolla doesn’t even have it as an option, and it is one of the top-selling cars in Australia,” Mr Goodwin said. “With the Mazda3, it is standard across the range.
“We know you understand the five-star philosophy, but we want you to start looking at the differences in those five-star cars. Start asking for AEB.”
Meanwhile, Mr Goodwin told the AFMA workshop that ANCAP was part of a broader drive for reducing the road toll and that it was “not just looking at car safety”. He said it was also looking at pedestrian safety where the same number of pedestrians die on the road as motorcyclists.
“People think motorcyclists are quite high in the road toll. But the number of motorcycle deaths and the number of pedestrian deaths are almost the same,” he said.
“Yet nobody thinks crossing the road is as dangerous as riding a motorbike.”
By Ian Porter
