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Road safety tests to place greater emphasis on semi-autonomous technology

The announcement was made as a part of Euro NCAP’s Road Map 2025 policy document

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Euro NCAP is to start assessing automated safety technology as part of its crash test regime.

The independent vehicle safety testing organisation laid out the plans in its Road Map 2025 policy document, which includes rough start dates for the inclusion of systems such as driver awareness monitoring (2020), collision avoidance technology (2020-2022) and vehicle-to-everything communication (2024) in its tests.

The organisation will also start to look at features such as child presence detection, which can register if a child has been left alone in a car and alert the owner and/or the emergency services.

Technologies that help to protect road users other than the vehicle occupant – such as cyclists and pedestrians – will also begin to play a more prominent role in safety tests.

Peter Shaw, CEO of Thatcham Research, an independent automotive safety and repair organisation, said: “Euro NCAP’s ‘Road Map 2025’ is a significant message of intent, and marks a watershed in vehicle safety assessments and ratings.

“It’s no longer about just protecting car occupants in an accident, but also assessing how capable a car can brake and steer automatically to avoid other vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. It lays the foundations for safety assessment of autonomous vehicles.”

Matthew Avery, Thatcham’s director of research, added: “We have concerns over the way car manufacturers name and market assisted and automated driving functionalities, with ‘auto’ or ‘pilot’ prefixes.

“People are looking for answers around how safe the new assisted and autonomous technologies are, and the Euro NCAP assessments and ratings will give clear information about how safely it operates, and what obligations the driver has around taking back control.”

Michiel van Ratingen, Euro NCAP secretary general, said: “The potential safety benefits of automated driving are huge. If we can eliminate human error, we should see road casualty numbers tumbling and many lives being saved.

“But there is a lot of misunderstanding, over expectation and perhaps some suspicion of a world in which cars can drive themselves. Our role will be to provide clear information to consumers about the degree of automation in a car and how safely that automation has been implemented.”

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