EUROPEAN NEW CAR ASSESSMENT PROGRAMME (Euro NCAP)

ASSESSMENT PROTOCOL OVERALL RATING

Version 5.1 June 2011

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Version 5.1 June 2011

EUROPEAN NEW CAR ASSESSMENT PROGRAMME (Euro NCAP) ASSESSMENT PROTOCOL OVERALL RATING

Table of Contents 1 2 3 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................... 1 PRINCIPLES .......................................................................................................................... 1 OVERALL RATING CALCULATION ............................................................................... 3

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Method ..........................................................................................................................................3 Weight Factors and Limits .........................................................................................................3 Balance Criteria ...........................................................................................................................4 Rounding ......................................................................................................................................4

APPENDIX I ................................................................................................................................... 6

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EUROPEAN NEW CAR ASSESSMENT PROGRAMME (Euro NCAP) ASSESSMENT PROTOCOL OVERALL RATING

INTRODUCTION

Euro NCAPs original assessment protocol was developed jointly by TRL and Vehicle Safety Consultants Ltd., under contract to the UK Department of the Environment Transport and the Regions and International Testing, respectively. Subsequent versions of the protocol have been developed and released by the Euro NCAP Secretariat. Beginning with Version 5, important changes have been included that have been brought about by the introduction of the overall rating scheme. Individual documents are released for the four main areas of assessment: Assessment Protocol Adult Occupant Protection; Assessment Protocol Child Occupant Protection; Assessment Protocol Pedestrian Occupant Protection; Assessment Protocol Safety Assist;

In addition to these four assessment protocols, the present document is provided describing the method and criteria by which the overall safety rating is calculated on the basis of the car performance in each of the above areas of assessment.

PRINCIPLES

The Euro NCAP programme is designed to provide a fair, meaningful and objective assessment of the safety performance of cars. It is intended to inform consumers, so providing an incentive to manufacturers as well as giving credit to those who provide maximum protection. The impact tests are based on those developed for legislation by the European Enhanced Vehicle safety Committee (EEVC) for frontal and side impact protection of car occupants and for the protection of pedestrians hit by the front of cars. Other tests are derived from existing legislative tests (such as the assessment of speed limiters), based on existing consumer tests (like whiplash) or completely developed by Euro NCAP (for example seat belt reminders). The overall safety rating covers the protection of adults and children in the event of a car crash and that of vulnerable road users who may be struck by the car. In addition, the rating addresses the ability of the car to support safer driving. No stylised test procedure fully reflects the safety provided by a car in the wide variety of accidents or near-accidents which may occur on the roads. However, cars that perform well in these tests should be generally less exposed to and provide better protection in accidents than cars which perform less well. The limitations of using standardised crash test dummies in fixed seating positions in the crash tests is partly overcome by taking into account other information related to occupant kinematics, interior contact points and vehicle structure, collected as part of post-crash vehicle inspections.
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Economic constraints prevent the tests from being repeated, so to take account of vehicle and test variations a number of actions have been taken: a) Manufacturers have been asked to compare the results from these tests with those from tests they may have conducted and to draw our attention to any anomalies they may find. They have also been requested to supply data from their own tests to us for comparison. Several manufacturers have supplied data for this purpose. Apart from considering the effects of test variation and identifying anomalies, no account of such data is taken in rating the cars and it is kept confidential. The overall assessments are based on the combination of multiple results. Variations in any one of these will only have a limited effect on the overall rating.

b)

The least demanding performance boundaries for the frontal and side impact parameters have been set to be equivalent to the limits proposed in the EEVC test procedures. The EEVC limits were set to provide a basic minimum level of protection and to protect only in a moderate proportion of accidents. For car occupants, these limits are too lenient to adequately identify best practice in current production cars and to provide a goal for further improvement. Additional, more demanding, protection boundaries have been set, to identify aspects of a cars performance which offer significantly greater protection. With the current level of pedestrian protection provided by car fronts, it would be optimistic to adopt a similar approach for the bodyform tests. In order to discriminate cars which just meet the EEVC requirements from those which greatly exceed them, a lower limit has been set. Assessment of the safety assist functions is based both on fitment requirement and performance requirements or fitment requirements alone. The intention is to promote standard fitment across the car volume sold in the European Community in combination with good functionality for these systems.

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3 3.1

OVERALL RATING CALCULATION Method

The overall rating is composed of scores achieved in the four areas of assessment, also referred to as boxes: Adult Occupant, Child Occupant and Pedestrian Protection and Safety Assist. The score in each box is based on the car performance in different tests. For each box, a total score is normalised with respect to the maximum achievable score available for the box. In this way, the maximum score for each box, and hence the total maximum score, is a constant. The weighted overall score is calculated from the individual assessment scores using weight factors. These weight factors reflect the relative importance of the four boxes in the final score. Foremost, the selection of percentages is guided by real world priorities and societal considerations. At the same time, the number and expected effectiveness (in terms of expected accident and injury reduction) of the protocols in each box are considered. The overall weighted score, determined by taking the weighted average of the scores in the four boxes, is used to generate the overall star rating by applying the score against the percentage score required for each star. Vehicles that show a poor performance in one of the boxes will have their star rating restricted to show that they do not provide good all-round protection. There will be a minimum score required in each box to validate a star rating. See Figure 3.1 (Appendix I) for a flow diagram of the method of calculation of the overall star rating. 3.2 Weight Factors and Limits

The weighted overall score is calculated from the individual scores in each box using weight factors. These weight factors are fixed for a certain period but may be updated from time to time as priorities or the contents of the boxes change. A change in weight factors will become effective no sooner than at the start of the year following the year in which the decision was made. Table 3.1 summarises the weight factors applied in the upcoming period. Table 3.1 Weight factors Year Box 1: Adult Occupant Protection Box 2: Child Occupant Protection Box 3: Pedestrian Protection Box 4: Safety Assist 2009 50% 20% 20% 10% 2010 50% 20% 20% 10% 2011 50% 20% 20% 10% 2012 50% 20% 20% 10%

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Provided there is sufficient balance between the four boxes, the weighted score, after rounding, applies to star values according to the following scheme: Table 3.2 Total points applied to star values, based on weighting Year For five stars, at least: For four stars, at least: For three stars, at least: For two stars, at least: For one star, at least: 3.3 Balance Criteria 2009 70% 55% 45% 35% 20% 2010 75% 60% 50% 35% 25% 2011 75% 60% 50% 35% 25% 2012 80% 70% 60% 55% 45%

Additional criteria are applied to the individual scores in order to assess all-round performance. The limits given in Tables 3.3a, 3.3b and 3.3c are applied after the individual test scores have been rounded. 3.4 Rounding

The following rounding rules will be applied in the calculation of the overall rating. The points score in each box is rounded to 3 decimal points. For instance, a total of added points for front, side, pole and whiplash of 25.1238 would be rounded off to 25.124; To calculate the score in each box, the 3 decimal result is then divided by the maximum points available for that box and the resulting percentage is rounded to 0 decimal points i.e. to an integer. In the example case: 25.124 / 36 * 100% = 69.789 is rounded to 70%; That integer is then compared with the balance percentage thresholds for the box in Table 3.3. In the example case 70% qualifies for 5 stars in 2009; The overall weighted score is calculated by multiplying the individual integers with the weight factors rounding the result to one decimal point. The contributions of the four boxes are added and finally rounded-off to 0 decimal points. This number is compared to the limits in Table 3.2.

Euro NCAP provides a Calculation Spreadsheet at request.

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Table 3.3a Balance limits for year 2009 2009 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Box 1: Adult Occupant 75% 60% 30% 25% 15% Box 2: Child Occupant 70% 55% 30% 25% 15% Box 3: Pedestrian 25% 15% 10% 5% 0% Box 4: Safety Assist 60% 40% 25% 15% 5%

Table 3.3b Balance limits for years 2010 and 2011 2010-2011 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Box 1: Adult Occupant 80% 65% 35% 30% 20% Box 2: Child Occupant 75% 60% 30% 25% 15% Table 3.3c Balance limits for years 2012 2012 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Box 1: Adult Occupant 80% 70% 40% 30% 20% Box 2: Child Occupant 75% 60% 30% 25% 15% Box 3: Pedestrian 60% 50% 25% 15% 10% Box 4: Safety Assist 60% 40% 25% 15% 5% Box 3: Pedestrian 40% 25% 15% 10% 5% Box 4: Safety Assist 60% 40% 25% 15% 5%

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APPENDIX I

Start

Protocols

Vehicle Assessment

Assessment Scores

Calculate Weighted Score

Weight Factors

Overall Weighted Score

Calculate Overall Star Rating

Limits

Meeting Balance Criteria?

No Downgrade

Yes Overall Rating

End

Figure 3.1 Flowchart for the Calculation of the Overall Star Rating
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