With Focus on Reducing Roadway Deaths, NHTSA Finalizes Significant Updates to 5-Star Safety Ratings Program

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today finalized significant updates to its consumer-facing 5-Star Safety Ratings program, a pivotal action that will improve safety on our nation’s roads by incorporating new advanced driver assistance technologies, adding a crashworthiness pedestrian protection program, and setting a roadmap for future program changes over the next 10 years.

The updated 5-Star Safety Ratings program—known as the New Car Assessment Program, or NCAP—emphasizes several new and emerging safety technologies and vehicle safety features that will help protect people both inside and outside a vehicle. The safety update was included as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.  

“This action today is another important step toward addressing the crisis on our roads and achieving the Department’s ambitious, long-term goal of zero road fatalities,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. “Like our move earlier this year to make automatic emergency braking standard on new passenger cars and light trucks, these changes to the 5-Star Safety Ratings will speed up adoption of technologies that reduce the frequency and severity of crashes while helping consumers make informed decisions about buying a new car.”

Notable changes to the program provided by this update include:

• The addition of four advanced driver assistance technologies that will enhance crash-avoidance safety: pedestrian automatic emergency braking, lane keeping assist, blind spot warning and blind spot intervention.
• Updated and strengthened testing procedures and performance criteria for advanced driver assistance technologies that are already included in NCAP, such as automatic emergency braking. 
• The addition of a crashworthiness pedestrian protection program to evaluate the ability of a vehicle’s front end to mitigate pedestrian injuries and fatalities in vehicle-to-pedestrian impacts.
• Midterm and long-term roadmaps to accommodate future updates amid ongoing research and technological advancements in vehicle safety, including crash avoidance and crashworthiness improvements to protect bicyclists and motorcyclists and an updated rating system.

“Our goal with NHTSA’s 5-Star Safety Ratings program has always been to help consumers choose safer vehicles and to encourage manufacturers to improve vehicle safety,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Adam Raviv said. “With these NCAP updates, we’re ensuring consumers have more useful and relevant information on the latest safety technologies and that the program keeps up with the pace of technological change and innovation.”

An updated NCAP is a key component of the Department’s National Roadway Safety Strategy and its work to significantly reduce serious injuries and deaths on our nation’s roads.

NCAP is NHTSA’s flagship consumer information program for evaluating vehicle safety. The program evaluates how well vehicles perform in various crash tests, including rollover risk, and provides an objective rating on a five-star scale to help consumers make an informed decision when buying a vehicle. For more on the NCAP program, please visit NHTSA.gov/Ratings.