Daniel Stern, Driving Vision News
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration invites public comment on proposed upgrades to the US NCAP (New Car Assessment Program). Under the plan, NCAP points would be awarded to vehicles with better-than-minimally-legal low beam headlamps and rear turn signals, and equipped with what the agency calls semi-automatic high/low beam switching. On the driver assistance front, points would be awarded for blind spot detection, crash-imminent braking, and dynamic brake support. All of this would be in the context of points for better-than-legally-required safety performance in crashworthiness areas like pedestrian protection and rear-seat passenger protection in frontal crashes.
The proposal is an extremely lengthy document, with detailed rationale and multifaceted analysis of each technology or feature on the list for proposed new NCAP points. Here we present some of the main points of interest to our industry, in hopes as many interested parties as possible will comment variously on the ideas in the document, so the eventual result will be as close as possible to optimal from every angle.