The new car assessment program suggested approaches for future program enhancements

NHTSA · 2007 · ROSA P / United States. Department of Transportation. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Summary

This 2007 report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) outlines proposed enhancements to the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) to maintain its effectiveness in driving voluntary vehicle safety improvements. The document addresses the need for program updates due to changes in the vehicle fleet, advances in injury criteria and test devices, the emergence of crash avoidance technologies, and the diminishing discrimination power of existing ratings as most vehicles achieve high scores. Motivated by a Government Accountability Office review and the need to align NCAP with real-world crash data, NHTSA seeks to refine its crashworthiness and crash avoidance assessments to better reflect current safety challenges. The analysis relies on National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) crash data, Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) statistics, and biomechanical research to identify gaps between current NCAP protocols and actual injury patterns. For frontal crashes, the report analyzes injuries by crash mode, speed, and occupant age, identifying knee/thigh/hip and lower leg injuries in low-speed impacts as significant areas for improvement. Side crash analysis focuses on serious injuries (AIS 3+) resulting from vehicle-to-vehicle impacts, noting that current tests using 1980s-era barrier characteristics may no longer represent the modern fleet. Rollover assessments examine the impact of Electronic Stability Control (ESC) on single-vehicle crash rates, while rear crash considerations are driven by consumer vulnerability concerns and neck injury data. Key findings indicate that current frontal NCAP tests fail to adequately address lower-speed injuries and specific body regions like the knees and legs, which account for a high volume of costly AIS 2+ injuries. In side impacts, the majority of serious injuries occur at delta-Vs of 25 mph or lower, yet the current moving deformable barrier test does not fully capture injury mechanisms in a fleet equipped with advanced airbags. The report also highlights that ESC significantly reduces single-vehicle rollover crashes by preventing loss-of-control events, suggesting that rollover risk models must be updated to account for ESC-equipped vehicles. Additionally, the lack of NCAP ratings for rear impacts leaves a gap in consumer information despite high rates of neck and head injuries in such collisions. The significance of these findings lies in the proposed strategic shifts to enhance NCAP’s relevance and consumer utility. NHTSA suggests incorporating knee/thigh/hip injury criteria into frontal ratings, potentially adopting new test dummies like WorldSID for side impacts, and developing new barrier protocols to reflect modern vehicle stiffness and weight. The agency also proposes integrating crash avoidance technologies into safety ratings to encourage their adoption and updating rollover models to reflect ESC efficacy. By aligning test protocols with real-world injury data and emerging technologies, NHTSA aims to sustain market pressure on manufacturers to exceed federal safety standards, thereby continuing to reduce traffic-related deaths and injuries.

Key finding

Current NCAP frontal and side impact tests fail to discriminate between vehicles and do not adequately address high-incidence injury regions such as the knee-thigh-hip complex in low-speed frontal crashes or head and chest injuries in low-delta-V side impacts.

Methodology

review

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-07; verification: verified.

Topics

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• adas effectiveness
• incidence prevalence
• naturalistic crash near crash
• comparative international
• crash typology

Information type

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• Applied Guidance: standards test procedures
• Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes