Projects financed by the Commission :: Project file
The opinions expressed in the studies are those of the consultant and do not necessarily represent the position of the Commission.
SARAC II
Quality criteria for the safety assessment of cars based on real-world crashes - phase 2
The SARAC II Project aimed to develop advanced methods of Safety Ratings and to apply these methods to extended accident databases. In addition, the relationship between EuroNCAP results and Real World Crashes has been investigated and ways in which consumers valued and used safety ratings when purchasing new vehicles were also explored. A worldwide review of all existing Car Safety Rating methods was initially conducted, with a detailed description of each method.
Theoretical and empirical investigations to improve and assess the relative performance of the various vehicle crashworthiness estimators have been made. These investigations on a large-scale empirical material and on simulated data material, have lead to improved decision criteria regarding which Safety Rating methods are best suited to analyse crashworthiness and aggressivity, respectively.
The application of safety ratings in the SARAC II Project has been substantially improved and extended by use of large-scale national statistics from Great Britain 1993 – 2001, France 1993 – 2001 and, for the first time in international research, German statistics 1998 – 2002. Comprehensive calculations show the crashworthiness rating and the injury severity risk of new car models tested by EuroNCAP. The analysis has been extended to Australia/New Zealand results and also Japanese experiences have been integrated in the SARAC II Research Reports.
New comprehensive studies of the consumer behaviour were also conducted in Sweden and Spain. They showed that car safety is a high priority even given the national differences in the different countries, but the impact of safety on purchasing behaviour still needs to be improved. This is true both for private consumers as well as for car fleet managers.
Feasibility studies were also conducted in SARAC II in the areas of primary safety and pedestrian accidents with cars. A review of features of primary safety has been made and real world results of effectiveness of these systems have been reviewed. ESP has been proven in international studies to be able to reduce the frequency of accidents with loss of control by 40%. Brake assistance systems (BAS) were also shown to be highly effective in accident studies. Theoretical considerations regarding how to improve the assessment of primary safety devices in real world crashes are part of this Research Report.
For the first time in international research, large-scale comparisons of EuroNCAP pedestrian safety ratings and real world experiences in car to pedestrian accidents have been made. This comparison of safety tests and real world injury experience showed no evidence of their correlation. Reasons for this may be in the basic problem of the need to specify single test conditions, selecting only one major crash situation from the unlimited real world crash situations, limitations with the databases used in these analyses, or the limited number of NCAP tested cars with upgraded pedestrian protection in the time frame of this report.
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