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Vehicle safety

Vehicles come with an array of safety features. Some of these are mandatory and you won’t get a Warrant of Fitness without them. Others are more sophisticated extras that you can choose when you buy a car. You can reduce your chances of being in a crash, and improve your chances of surviving one, by choosing a car with better safety features. When buying a vehicle, you should consider:

  • Are the vehicle’s safety and design features likely to protect you in a crash?
  • Does the vehicle have features that help you to avoid a crash?
  • Is your vehicle likely to seriously harm other road users in a crash?

Safety design features include, among other features:

How you maintain your vehicle is also important in keeping it safe and reducing its environmental impact.

How the safety ratings are calculated

There are two principal safety ratings available:

  • UCSR (Used Car Safety Ratings) – based on real-world crashes
  • ANCAP (Australasian New Car Assessment Program) – based on laboratory tests using crash-test dummies

This web site primarily uses Used Car Safety Ratings. These are available for a much wider range of vehicles than ANCAP, because:

  • ANCAP testing is only done on a limited number of vehicles each year
  • ANCAP ratings are for a specific version of a model, whereas Used Car Safety Ratings apply to groups of models that have the same overall construction and features

Because Used Car Safety Ratings are only available once vehicles have crashed in sufficient quantities, this site bases its safety star ratings on the latest rating available for a make and model. ANCAP ratings are also listed where these are available.

Used Car Safety Ratings

The Used Car Safety Ratings are calculated from a statistical analysis of police reports on crashes that have occurred over the past twenty years in five states of Australia and in New Zealand. There are currently about a million crashes in this database

These ratings are calculated by the Monash University Accident Research Centre in Australia.

The statistical analysis is recalculated each year to include the crashes that happened that year, to re-evaluate the data so that the performance of individual makes and models of vehicles can be compared, and to sort out:

  • Risk to the driver – whether or not the driver was injured in the crash and, if injury resulted, the severity of those injuries.
  • Harm to other road users – what happened to pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and the driver of the other car in a collision.

People who are concerned with safety should look for a vehicle with at least a better than average rating (4 stars) for driver protection and at least an average rating (3 stars) for impact on other road users.

For a detailed technical report, read the Monash University used car safety ratings update for 2007 (1.1 MB PDF file).

Copies of the booklet Used Car Safety Ratings 2007 are available at no charge from AA Centres across the country. Booklets can also be ordered from any Land Transport NZ regional office, or by phoning our Helpdesk on (freephone) 0800 699 000.

ANCAP ratings

New car safety ratings, such as ANCAP, are determined by crash testing vehicles in a controlled laboratory setting using crash-test dummies. ANCAP tests judge the protection provided to front-seat occupants wearing safety belts in serious head-on and side-impact crashes.

Research shows that the two ratings systems correlate well overall. However, the results should not be compared directly because the different sources of the ratings can lead to differences in the assessment of some vehicles.

The highest rating currently awarded by ANCAP is five stars. Therefore safety ratings for new vehicles on Rightcar are rated out of five stars rather than the six stars used in other catagories.

Any vehicle safety rating system can only provide an indication of the relative levels of protection between vehicles you can expect in the event of a crash. However, whether or not you are involved in a crash at all depends to a great extent on how safely you drive your vehicle.