Australia Aligning Car-Safety Criteria With Europe’s

Australia and New Zealand’s new-vehicle safety assessment program is further tightening its standards effective Jan. 1 as it moves to align its requirements with those in Europe.

The Australasian New Car Assessment Program says the criteria against which new cars will be evaluated will rise for all rating levels.

Increasing ANCAP standards and a comprehensive development and expansion path in partnership with Euro NCAP is aimed at making cars even safer in 2015.

The safety organization has introduced annual increases to each star rating since its implementation in 2011 and this will continue for each star rating through 2017.

In parallel, ANCAP is entering a transition phase from 2015 as its moves to more closely align its tests, protocols and calculation method with those of its sister organization, Euro NCAP.

For 15 years ANCAP has produced half its ratings from test data sourced from Euro NCAP.

ANCAP CEO Nicholas Clarke says the ratings’ value to consumers will continue growing.

“Improvements in vehicle safety design and development in the past few years have been swift and substantial, particularly in the realm of advanced safety assist collision-avoidance technologies, and test programs the world over are adjusting their plans to match pace,” Clark says in a statement.

Clarke says that from 2015, ANCAP requirements will align more closely with Euro NCAP to provide consumers with the best technology and safest cars available.

During the 2015-2017 transition period, ANCAP will use both its own and Euro NCAP policies and protocols with two assessment pathways employed to determine ANCAP safety ratings.

Testing of safety-assist technologies covering autonomous emergency braking, lane-support systems, speed-assistance systems and electronic stability control will be introduced and the range of physical crash tests will broaden.

By 2018 ANCAP and Euro NCAP policies and protocols largely will be aligned.

“This is an important step in the evolution of ANCAP and NCAPs worldwide as we work together to share knowledge, data and expertise, and encourage manufacturers to develop cars for a global market,” Clarke says.