Report on the Historical Performance of Different Auto Manufacturers in the NewCar Assessment Program Tests

摘要

In 1978, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began the NewCar Assessment Program (NCAP) with the primary purpose of partially fulfilling one of the requirements of Title II of the Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act of 1972. This requirement was to provide consumers with a measure of relative crashworthiness of passenger motor vehicles. The agency concluded that by using existing technical approaches, safety information on the relative crashworthiness which vehicles provide in high-speed frontal crashes could be developed. This information provided consumers with an important input to aid them in their vehicle purchase decisions. The ultimate goal of NCAP was to encourage vehicle manufacturers to voluntarily design better crashworthiness into their vehicles, by using market forces, as compared to regulatory directives. In this program, vehicles are subjected to a frontal crash test. The vehicles are towed head-on into a fixed, rigid barrier at 35 mph. The report lists the relative crashworthiness of the vehicles in a high-speed frontal impact.