Car Safety: Ratings to Consider in Choosing Your Next Car

Three Types of Vehicle Safety to Consider:

  1. Active Safety – helping you avoid trouble on the road. Active safety technology works to reduce the chance of an accident happening by making sure:
    • you can manoeuvre your car as you need to when you need to
    • Your vehicle will actively work to minimise driving errors
    Features include:
    • Good handling
    • Tyres*
    • Anti-lock braking systems (ABS),
    • Vehicle Stability Control (VSC - as sometimes called Electronic Stability Control (ESC))
    *Tyre condition is a big part of a Warrant of Fitness for a reason!
  2. Passive Safety – protecting you and your passengers if you are involved in a collision. Passive safety is all about minimising harm caused by the impact of a collision.
    • a structure designed to protect occupants in collisions. Features include crumple zones, collapsible steering columns, airbags, seat belts and seat design.
  3. Others’ Safety – working to protect the other party in any accident be it a pedestrian or another vehicle -- your choice of car can make a big difference to the safety of the people you share the road with.

How Safe Is Your Car?

ANCAP is the local source of crash test information. It's also worth checking out what other similar agencies say about the car you are considering*:


(*Different agencies test different things; make sure you understand these differences as you compare results.)

Car safety ratings should be a big part of your car choice. Having the right safety features protects you, your family... other motorists and pedestrians. Safer roads for you; safer roads for the people you share them with.

You can do everything in your power to control what you do on the road. But things you can’t control – other drivers, road conditions, chance, etc. – can still compromise your safety.

Choosing a car with the right safety features can help protect you and your family if something does go wrong on the road.

How Safe Is Your Car?

Features vary widely, though, and no two car models share the exact same safety profile.

The good news is you don’t need to be an engineer, mechanic or car fanatic to assess your new car’s safety features.

Many new or newish cars will have been tested for safety and given a car safety rating and ratings for some older vehicles are also available.

ANCAP Car Safety Ratings for New Vehicles

It’s difficult to know how a new car will behave in a crash. So, new cars are crash tested by independent agencies around the world. And these tests indicate what might happen to a car and its occupants in a crash – we’ve all seen the dramatic images of crash test dummies doing their important job.

If you are buying a car in New Zealand manufactured after 1997 your first point of reference for safety information is its Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) rating.

ANCAP are the people who propel cars at solid objects and objects at cars to see what happens to the structure of the vehicle and its dummy occupants. And you should be aware of what they found out about your car before you make a purchase decision.

ANCAP Ratings Explained

ANCAP performs two and sometimes three tests to give vehicles one to five stars and gives cars scores out of a possible 37 points. More recently tests have included a Pedestrian Safety Rating from one to four stars assessing the likely effect of a car hitting an adult or child pedestrian at 40 kmh.

(Note: Sometimes ANCAP tests Australian specified vehicles that are not exactly the same as the New Zealand model. And watch out for difference in specification between tested models and the one you wish to buy. But - while it is important to note these differences - ANCAP ratings are still an independent indication of safety standards achieved by a car model.)

Used Car Safety Ratings

It might be harder to find safety testing results for older vehicles. But it’s easier to know how a car model behaves in a collision if it’s been around for a while. Crash results are carefully collated and analysed, and readily available.

Compiled by Monash University’s Accident Research Centre, used car safety ratings for 349 models of car are available from Land Transport NZ.

It’s worth taking the time to investigate the car safety rating and features of any vehicle you are considering buying, new or used. The time you take could save your life.

Toyota Safety Features:

Want more on these features? Check out SafetyToyota.com

 

 

We believe in going the extra mile

At Toyota we believe in going the extra mile and doing everything we can to make you and your family safe in your car is a big part of that extra mileage.

Our 44,000m2 all-weather safety research facility lets us take safety testing a little further. It’s a big – literally—part of making Toyota drivers and their families more safe than most: