EuroNCAP, the independent crash testing specialist, has released the latest round of results and there are a lot of cars scoring the maximum possible five-stars.
Five stars for five cars
The new Land Rover Defender (in long-wheelbase 110 form), the Audi A3, the SEAT Leon, the Kia Sorento, and the Isuzu D-Max pickup all racked up a maximum five stars. The Honda e electric city car scored four-stars, while the Hyundai i10 got a three-star score.
The Isuzu D-Max is possibly the most surprising score there, with even EuroNCAP saying that the pickup truck segment is "not famous for highlighting safety." The D-Max won praise for impressive passive safety performance, although NCAP noted that its rugged construction "make the pick-up aggressive to other vehicles in a collision."
The Land Rover Defender received the same criticism, although NCAP noted that the big Land Rover "is equipped with modern driver-assistance systems to prevent and mitigate, as far as possible, collisions with other road-users."
The Kia Sorento, no small car itself, saw its rating boosted by an innovative front-centre airbag system (which prevents front-seat passengers from clattering into one another in a side impact) after NCAP said that it put in an "underwhelming performance in the frontal offset crash."
'Acceptable performance'
The Honda e was marked down a little for failing to offer such protection systems as a knee airbag, or side chest and pelvis airbag, but nonetheless, NCAP said that the small electric car's performance was 'acceptable.'
The i10's three-star score saw the small Hyundai get tripped up by an underwhelming automatic emergency braking system, and a front seatbelt that allowed the driver to slip under the lap belt strap, a phenomenon known as 'submarining'.
Crash compatibility
Part of this round of tests was to improve NCAP's understanding of how large, heavy vehicles (such as the D-Max, Defender, and Sorento) interact with smaller cars in an impact - what's known as crash compatibility. Euro NCAP's Secretary General, Michiel van Ratingen, said: "Poor crash compatibility between vehicles has been a problem for years. Now, in 2020, we have a frontal test which can assess how a vehicle performs in this regard and can penalise those cars that perform poorly. This is a first for safety assessment and should lead to better, more compatible designs in the future."
NCAP also tested hybrid and electric versions of cars that it previously tested in petrol or diesel form, so as to make sure that the extra weight of batteries doesn't affect the crash performance. Happily, the plug-in hybrid versions of the Renault Captur, and the Peugeot 3008 and 508, and the electric version of the Peugeot 208, all achieved the same scores as their conventional counterparts - five stars for all, except for the 208, which scored four stars.