The auto industry seems willing to go along with a proposal to blend a number of crash test ratings into a consolidated safety score for each new vehicle, as long as the score does not rate new technologies but critics say the proposal doesn't go far enough.
The proposal is part of an effort at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to provide consumers with a number they can use to compare the safety aspects of different vehicles.
The program, which was introduced while Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook was head of NHTSA, has fallen behind similar programs in other countries, Claybrook said in testimony before NHTSA.
When consumers purchase a vehicle, they want to know how it performs in various types of tests, not just the three now included in the NCAP program -- front, side and rollover causation, she said. The existing program does not include a dynamic rollover crash test to determine a vehicle's safety during a rollover crash.
Claybrook's testimony indicated that a rollover crash protection NCAP test is of great importance to consumers because rollover crashes represent more than 20 percent of highway fatalities. The number of rollover crashes has increased dramatically over the past several years, and NHTSA's response to the rollover problem has been ineffective.
The 30 year-old New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) is widely known for the five-star crash ratings that appear prominently in car and truck advertising.
Critics of the federal five-star safety testing program charge that the five stars are obtained by so many vehicles in each group that they are virtually meaningless because they fail to differentiate between the safest vehicles and those that are less safe.
Claybrook also urged the agency to include in the updated NCAP an "aggressivity standard" that would provide consumers with information about the risks their vehicles pose to others on the roads and show the consequences of crashes between lighter and heavier vehicles.
"When a consumer chooses a vehicle, she is primarily concerned with the safety of an occupant in that vehicle but often does not consider the safety to occupants of other vehicles," Claybrook said. "Occupants of vehicles are twice as likely to be injured or killed in side-impact crashes with SUVs as with other cars."
Claybrook also offered suggestions for improving NCAP by rating child safety restraints, creating a pedestrian rating, rating vehicle performance in rear-impact crashes and adding an offset frontal crash test rating.
The new safety program could also provide for tougher government tests that produce fewer five-star vehicles while showing how well they protect dummies in crashes.
Currently vehicles receive grades for the driver and passenger in a front impact, for the driver and rear passenger in a side impact and for rollover danger.
Combining the test and rating systems will not be an easy task however.
The automakers agree that a combined safety score for existing crash tests which measure how well occupants are protected from injury. They insist that new technologies like such as electronic stability control designed to avoid a crash be kept separate however.
NHTSA is also considering rating vehicles for how well they protect children in crashes as well using female dummies in passenger seats because women are the ones most often injured in those locations.
One proposal certain to be controversial would allow automakers to conduct the crash tests themselves with only with periodic checks by NHTSA.
