|
Euro NCAP plans to overhaul its rating system in 2026 with a more comprehensive framework that will assess vehicles across four key phases: safe driving, crash avoidance, crash protection, and postcrash safety.
The updated scheme will prioritize real-world evidence, such as gender equality in safety and the aging population of drivers, while enhancing tests to better simulate real traffic conditions. Driver and occupant monitoring technologies will play a more significant role in evaluating attentive and impaired driving, improving vehicle safety through smarter restraint deployment and other interventions. Additionally, Euro NCAP plans to incorporate virtual testing, alongside traditional crash and track tests, to provide deeper insights into vehicle performance.
The program will also integrate 4G/5G car-to-network communication, enhancing situational awareness and enabling advanced countermeasures for crash scenarios. Euro NCAP’s commitment to network neutrality ensures that all communication technologies—including car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure systems based on ITS-G5 and C-V2X standards—will be evaluated in a technology-neutral way. This approach guarantees that no single technology dominates the assessment, allowing for a fair and impartial evaluation of each safety function.
Full Article: IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, Volume 20, Number 2, June 2025
|
