Global NCAP’s Annual Awards recognize promoters of consumer protection and innovation in vehicle safety. The winners this year are the UN World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations, Thatcham Research and consumer champion Ralph Nader.
David Ward, secretary general of Global NCAP, said, “This year’s Consumer Champion award goes to the UN World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations. The forum is responsible for the world’s most important vehicle safety standards. It provides all countries with a fast track method to apply regulations that promote crashworthiness and crash avoidance. Crucially, it also is an intergovernmental forum that gives a voice of the consumer as new regulations are developed.
“This year’s Individual Achievement Award goes to Ralph Nader whose book ‘Unsafe at Any Speed’ sparked a revolution in vehicle safety just over 50 years ago. His championing of consumer rights and safety lead to the formation of the National Highway Safety Administration and the adoption of standards that have avoided millions of deaths and serious injuries across the United States,” said Ward.
“This year’s Innovation award goes to Thatcham Research for its work developing test and evaluation procedures for autonomous emergency braking (AEB). Rather than surviving a crash it is better not to have one at all. AEB helps to do this and Thatcham has played a leading role in testing the effectiveness of the system. This vital effort is key to building consumer demand for advanced crash avoidance technologies that can deliver significant reductions in death and serious injuries on the world’s roads.”
Consumer Champion
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is the custodian of UN vehicle safety standards and host of the World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations. This unique intergovernmental platform of vehicle safety cooperation includes civil society participation giving a voice to independent consumer representatives in its decision-making. WP 29 is responsible for the most important passenger car regulations such as seat belt anchorages, safety belts and restraints, frontal collision, lateral collision, electronic stability control, pedestrian protection and child restraints.
Individual Champion
In 1965, Ralph Nader published “Unsafe at Any Speed – The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile.” The book exposed the failures of the U.S. car industry to tackle crashworthiness of vehicles and, in particular, highlighted faulty rear suspension of the Chevrolet Corvair that had caused numerous crashes and related lawsuits. In the face of strong industry opposition, Nader’s book became a bestseller and acted as a powerful catalyst for change in automotive safety in the United States and around the world. Established as a champion of consumer rights, Nader went on to establish a wide variety of organizations, promoting corporate and government accountability, including Public Citizen, the Center for Auto Safety.
In response to “Unsafe at Any Speed” the Administration of President Lyndon Johnson in September 1966 passed the National Highway Traffic Safety Act, which led to the establishment of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency was mandated to set minimum, uniform safety performance standards for all motor vehicles, and to require automakers to notify owners and recall cars containing safety-related defects. NHTSA also subsequently went on to launch the world’s first new car assessment program in 1978 on the initiative of Joan Claybrook (who won Global NCAP’s Individual Achievement Award in 2012).
Innovation
Thatcham Research is the U.K. Insurers’ vehicle research center, and is playing a leading role promoting crash avoidance technologies, especially autonomous emergency braking (AEB).
Collaborating with international partners including the European New Car Assessment Programme and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Thatcham embarked on a research program to understand real world crash evidence and define a test and rating procedure to guide AEB system design. The test procedures cover low-speed city crashes, predominantly focussed on whiplash injuries, and higher speed inter-urban crashes with moving and braking target vehicles replicating more serious crashes. These tests were always designed with harmonization in mind and have been adopted in both the U.K. and German insurance group rating systems and also within European and U.S. safety consumer tests. Thatcham helped define the test configurations and vehicle target, integrating appropriate visual and radar attributes used for evaluating the systems.
Initial AEB applications from 2008 saw systems addressing low-speed, front-to-rear collisions avoiding up to 20km/h. More recent developments have seen the effective speed range of systems rising up to 60km/h. Recent enhancements have seen the test procedures expanding to include pedestrians and soon cyclists. Thatcham have tested more than 120 vehicles so far for both the Insurance Group Rating system and also for the Euro NCAP star rating tests. A significant part of Thatcham’s work has been extolling the benefits of AEB to the media and fleets with regular TV and radio interviews on the subject to increase consumer awareness. Thatcham has partnered with several organizations in the “Stop-The-Crash” campaign, which has given public demonstrations at key events. The analysis of crash rates has shown a very positive real world effect on European crash rates with a 38 percent overall reduction in front into rear crashes.
