Reaching for the stars
You may have seen an ANCAP Safety Rating when you’re looking to buy a car, but do you know the difference between a one-star and five-star rating and the tests undertaken to score a vehicle? Get a behind-the-scenes peek at what takes place at an ANCAP crash test and how it helps save lives on Australian roads.
Words: Jeremy Rochow
A garage door opens, lights illuminate and in a flash a Toyota Camry shoots forward, reaching 50km/h in seconds. Then with a loud boom, the car crashes into a moving trolley. Glass shatters, metal crumples and airbags inflate instantly. The lights go out.
The driver – a $1.5 million crash-test dummy – jolts forward only to be restrained by the car’s seatbelt. The car’s other three occupants – another adult in the front passenger seat and two children in the back seats – do the same. Moments later, the site looks like a Formula 1 crash scene.
Despite the controlled environment, the crash is confronting. For some people, observing the test has brought back memories of car crashes they’ve witnessed. As we watch from the gantry above the crash site, the crew at Sydney’s Crashlab – one of ANCAP’s test laboratories – disperses across the floor below, sweeping up glass. Another team member plugs in a computer to collect data.
Nobody was hurt in this crash. Quite the opposite in fact – this crash might help save lives. Read on to find out how.
WHAT IS ANCAP?
The Australasian New Car Assessment Program – better known as ANCAP SAFETY – is an independent voice on vehicle safety. It conducts safety-based tests on vehicles sold in Australia and New Zealand and publishes a star rating based on the findings.
ANCAP Chief Executive Officer Carla Hoorweg says the program aims to provides factual, reliable information to the public.
“We’re empowering customers to make safer vehicle choices by providing them with a zero to five-star rating that allows customers to compare the comparable safety performance of those vehicles,” Carla says.
The ANCAP tests go well above and beyond the minimum requirements of the Australian Design Rules for vehicles.
“While [all vehicles] have to meet the regulations (Australian Design Rules), they’re a pretty low bar, but what ANCAP does is set a much higher bar and then allow customers to compare,” Carla says.
Since its inception in 1992, ANCAP has tested hundreds of vehicles. In 2021-22 alone, ANCAP safety ratings were published for 34 vehicle models covering more than 150 variants.
HOW DOES ANCAP HELP SAVE LIVES ON OUR ROADS?
In the 1990s, when ANCAP was first established, there were on average 10 lives lost per 100,000 vehicles on the road each year. Today, that’s more than halved to 4.5 deaths per 100,000 vehicles on Australian roads.
While ANCAP can’t take sole responsibility for reducing road fatalities in both Australia and New Zealand, it’s played an integral part.
“We’re providing that really thorough safety benchmark for manufacturers and provide them, along with consumers, the information that they need to do better if they’re falling short in specific areas,” Carla says.
The Toyota Camry I saw tested at Sydney’s Crashlab had dual frontal, side chest, side head, centre and driver knee airbags, and the front of the car crumpled but the cabin looked intact.
Looking at photos of some of the vehicles tested in the 1990s, the difference in safety technology is noticeable at first glance. There may have been a lone steering wheel airbag, and the bonnet looked far more crumpled than the Toyota I witnessed being tested.
ANCAP CEO Carla Hoorweg.
Then there are the other safety features on modern cars like blind-spot detection, automatic emergency braking and lane keep assist.
ANCAP tests many of these new technologies, and vehicles lacking these features may not score as highly. As technology and car safety improves, so does the criteria needed for car manufacturers to receive a five-star ANCAP rating.
“What we see is that crashes that previously would’ve been fatalities are now ones where people might not die, or now, they suffer a lesser injury instead of serious injuries previously,” Carla says.
“That’s really coming down to the vehicle structure and restraints. But more and more, with the new safety technologies available, what we want to see for the future is the ability of cars to avoid a crash, particularly with a vulnerable road user, which means those [fatality and serious injury] statistics come down as well.”
ANCAP's family of dummies
ANCAP has a range of crash-test dummies – both female, male and children of varying ages – which it uses to collect information on injuries and trauma suffered in a crash. It also uses pedestrian, motorcyclist and cyclist dummies for a range of tests, including emergency braking and lane-support scenarios.
HOW ARE CARS TESTED?
As the Crashlab team assesses damage to the vehicle, we walk down from the gantry to the site for an up-close look at the 2024 Toyota Camry and the impacts of the crash. This test – a frontal offset test – simulates a head-on crash with another vehicle travelling at the same speed.
This is just one of seven physical crash tests ANCAP undertakes to reproduce the most common on-road crash types. This includes side-impact and run-off-road crashes, rear-end collisions and pedestrian incidents. ANCAP tests the impact these crashes have on both adults and children using its family of dummies.
Along with the physical crash tests, ANCAP also undertakes more than 600 active safety tests. These tests assess the effectiveness of a vehicle’s safety assist collision avoidance technology, including emergency-braking and lane-support systems and automatic emergency steering. In 2023, ANCAP broadened its assessment to include scenarios where a car encounters a motorcyclist and a child pedestrian.
HOW DOES THE RATING SYSTEM WORK?
Before a car buyer hands over their hard-earned money, it’s a good idea to check the vehicle’s ANCAP safety rating. They might find the car has a five-star safety rating, or alternatively it could have a rating between one and four or even a zero-star rating. What does all this mean? Let us explain.
A five-star ANCAP safety rating generally means the vehicle has overall excellent performance in crash protection and state-of-the-art crash avoidance technology. For example, the Toyota Camry had strong results in crash testing, with a record high score of 95 per cent for adult occupant protection.
On the other hand, zero stars means it meets national approval standards, so it can legally be sold in Australia but may provide a poor level of structural performance or may lack basic safety features. The MG5 Sedan and Mahindra Scorpio SUV both received zero stars after ANCAP completed tests in 2023. This was due to a range of physical crash-protection limitations and the omission of common safety features found in most new cars for many years.
"A five-star ANCAP rating generally means the vehicle has overall excellent performance in crash protection and state-of-the-art crash avoidance technology."
ANCAP has four main criteria it assesses: adult occupant protection, child occupant protection, vulnerable road-user protection and safety assist.
“Scoring is designed to encourage good all-round performance across all those pillars, so it’s not appropriate for a vehicle to do really well in a couple of areas and absolutely bomb out in another,” Carla says.
“We want to see good performance across all those areas, and usually vehicles need to score between 70 and 80 per cent in each pillar to get the top mark [five stars]. Where vehicles perform poorly, it’s often because they have fallen down in a particular area and that has meant the overall score hasn’t met the threshold for that pillar and the score is capped.”
Back at the Crashlab, the team continues analysing data collected from the Toyota Camry as we leave the centre. After months of testing and reviews, they release the star rating on the ANCAP website along with detailed results. Why? To help consumers make an informed decision and find the safest vehicle they can afford.
“It’s really important to pay attention to the safety rating,” concludes Carla. “Make sure you’re checking it out before you purchase a car, because unless you look at that, you don’t know how the vehicle has performed in regard to safety.”
Do you have a road safety question?
Speak to RAA’s road safety experts on 8202 4517 or email roadsafety@raa.com.au
VIDEO: ANCAP IMAGES: ANCAP, Getty, RAA.
