Euro NCAP safety ratings
What do the tests involve?
These are the main tests that Euro NCAP laboratories carry out on every new car they assess.
The tests are designed to find out how well the car protects its occupants – or other vulnerable road users – in the most common types of accident.
As well as testing how well the car is able to protect occupants against injury in a crash, Euro NCAP also considers new systems designed to help reduce the risk of an accident happening in the first place.
There's no 'pass' or 'fail' – the ratings and scores show how well cars perform in the tests. Cars are inspected after the tests and, because only one size of test dummy is used (representing an average adult male), the ratings are adjusted to take account of how well the car would protect people of different sizes.
Front impact test
This represents the most common type of accident. The car crashes at 64kph (40mph) with 40% of the width of the front striking the barrier.
This test looks at contact between the dummies and intruding parts of the car's passenger compartment as well as the performance of the restraint systems - belts, airbags, belt pretensioners (take up slack in the belt) and load limiters - that can reduce the belt load on the dummy's chest.
Knee contact with the lower half of the dashboard is also taken into account as are footwell intrusion and pedal movement.
Car to car side-impact
The car is stationary and is struck in the driver's door by the trolley moving at 50kph (30mph).
The evaluation looks at the type and amount of side intrusion and the performance of side impact protecting airbags.
Pole side impact test
A quarter of all serious and fatal accidents result from side-on collisions where one car runs into another or a car runs into a stationary object such as a tree, lamp post, or bridge support.
Euro NCAP first introduced the 'pole' test in 2000 to assess the protection offered by 'curtain' or head protection airbags where fitted. An impact that would almost certainly be fatal without is made survivable by head protecting airbags.
The car is propelled sideways at 18mph (29kph) into a rigid pole. The pole is relatively narrow, and usually penetrates deep into the side of the car.
Initially optional, the pole test has been a standard part of Euro NCAP's model assessment since 2009.
Pedestrian tests
Dummy adult and child body parts packed full of impact sensors are fired at locations across the car's bumper and bonnet to represent a 25mph collision.
Euro NCAP's pedestrian tests have helped encourage car manufacturers to remove stiff structures from the bumper and bonnet leading edge, and design bonnets that are able to deflect without contacting stiff, unyielding structures underneath.
In June 2002 Euro NCAP changed the way the tests were carried out. The new methods are more realistic but the change meant that pedestrian ratings from before June 2002 cannot be compared directly with those after.
Whiplash tests
Euro NCAP's engineers look at the shape, size and position of front seat head restraints as well as carrying out a series of dynamic tests simulating rear impacts at a range of crash severities.
Comparing different cars
In the side-impact test, a fair comparison can be made between different-sized cars. The frontal test replicates a crash between two identically sized cars – a family car against another family car – so comparisons can only be made within a size category.
The results for frontal impact and the overall adult occupant rating should not be compared between cars in different size categories.
Because Euro NCAP has continuously evolved the tests it carries out and the criteria it applies to after-crash inspections it's important to only compare ratings betweens car models tested in a similar era.
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4 August 2011