Thatcham ends 22-year Euro NCAP partnership

Thatcham Research has ended its partnership with Euro NCAP and launched its own ADAS field test programme, saying that shortcomings in ADAS technology represent a "lost opportunity". The insurer-backed research company joined Euro NCAP – which crash tests cars and rates them for safety – in 2004. Thatcham’s decision coincides with the introduction of Euro NCAP’s biggest revision to its test protocols since 2009, when it introduced its overall rating system. Among the changes are improvements to how the organisation evaluates advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), a move that, it says, is in response to criticisms of their "intrusive interventions and annoying warnings". However, it’s these same criticisms that helped inform Thatcham’s decision to leave Euro NCAP in order to pursue its own evaluations of ADAS features and their performance in the real world. “There is a need, from our point of view, for a little more nuance,” Thatcham chief research and operations officer Richard Billyeald told Autocar. “The discussion is around how ADAS systems interfere with the job of driving and that is mostly a negative and not a positive thing. "When we talk about real-world safety, it’s how do we make these systems work when they’re supposed to? We want these systems to reflect their capability. We want them to stop you from running into someone but we don’t want them to interfere when they shouldn’t. “When they do, drivers turn them off and so are not getting the safety benefit and that’s the key here. We want a more collaborative driving experience.” He added: “We and they [Euro NCAP] have done fantastic work in the past 25 years improving passive safety and active safety but now’s the time to concentrate on our own agenda. It’s still a safety agenda but we’re taking a more real-world view of safety.” Billyeald defended Thatcham’s decision, saying that leaving Euro NCAP did not mean it would lose its ability to influence safety developments. He said that last year Thatcham partnered with Ivex, specialists in ADAS testing and validation, to evaluate the performance of ADAS systems in the real world. Called Ground Truth, the test programme monitors the performance of ADAS features in cars over the course of 1200 miles. “A five-star car will perform fantastically on track but put two five-star cars on the road and they will perform very differently,” said Billyeald. “You can have the bings and bongs and the steering wheel shaking in your hands but that can happen more on some cars than others. We’re measuring how accurate those responses are.” Billyeald confirmed that Thatcham will continue to crash test vehicles while also generating its own rating system based on vehicles’ safety, security, damageability and repairability. “Car makers buy into Euro NCAP but they also buy into our vehicle risk rating, which is a fundamental part of making their cars insurable in the UK and globally,” he said.

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Thatcham ends 22-year Euro NCAP partnership

UK research firm splits amicably from safety ratings giant as it looks for more "real-world view of safety"

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Thatcham ends 22-year Euro NCAP partnership

UK research firm splits amicably from safety ratings giant as it looks for more "real-world view of safety"

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