When you’re shopping for a new car, safety should be a top priority, especially if you’re buying with the family in mind. With its five-star safety rating system, the Euro NCAP test helps consumers identify and compare car safety ratings, so they can go for the option that best suits their needs.

The most reliable way of assessing new car safety, NCAP ratings provide both peace of mind and an indication of just how far safety technology has progressed over the decades. But how exactly does it calculate these ratings and what do the ratings indicate?

To help, we’ll take a look at NCAP in more detail below.

What is Euro NCAP?

Prior to 1997, buyers looking for a new car could only go off a manufacturer’s reputation and the list of safety equipment before making a purchase.

However, all that changed when the Euro NCAP (New Car Assessment Programme) was created that same year. Designed to test how safe a car is in a collision, the Euro NCAP put aside the pomp and circumstance of car ads and marketing – which was previously a sufficient measure of safety(!) – in favour of rigorous testing, hard facts and a straightforward five-star rating system.

Manufacturers may have been livid at the time, claiming such tests were unfair and overly harsh, but those all-important star ratings now play a huge part in car sales. Without a four or five-star rating, it would certainly be hard to justify purchasing a car that scored anything less.

Keep in mind that due to its independent status, it isn’t a legal requirement for cars to have a Euro NCAP test. Even cars that score zero are on sale and perfectly legal to buy, but again: would you opt for a car knowing it had a zero-star safety rating?

What does the Euro NCAP test involve?

There are several tests involved in the Euro NCAP, each of them designed to reflect real-world accidents. These tests have been expanded with the advent of more sophisticated safety technology coming to market, such as automatic braking and speed assistance.

With the help of sensor-equipped crash-test dummies, the Euro NCAP measures what might happen to a real person should the same thing happen out on the road. Alongside adult occupants, they also use child-sized dummies to simulate infants for more thorough testing. 

Let’s take a look at how cars are tested below.

Frontal impact: A test of a car’s safety performance when involved in a front impact with another vehicle, the test involves a car travelling at 31mph colliding with a moving barrier travelling at the same speed.

Car-to-car-side impact: To determine how a car protects its occupants when struck by another vehicle from the side, a large robot crashes into the car’s side doors. Any ‘injuries’ sustained by the dummies are recording, including injuries caused by occupants colliding with each other.

Pole side impact: Like the above, except the car is in motion and the object is stationary. This reflects what happens if a driver was to lose control of their car and skid into a tree or lamp post, for example.

Pedestrian protection: Since a car’s design can end up protecting pedestrians, this test mirrors collisions with both adult and child pedestrians to see how the car’s design plays a part in protecting them.

Child protection systems: Euro NCAP also assesses how well and how safely a car accommodates child safety seats, using crash test dummies that are roughly the same size as an 18-month-old and a three-year-old.T