The AA Safest Car award is a somewhat unique part of the AA DRIVEN COTY awards, in that it is a numbers based system based on scores awarded by ANCAP for crash test and safety ratings, as opposed to judges input and opinion.
With the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (commonly referred to as ANCAP Safety) is Australia and New Zealand's independent voice on vehicle safety.
ANCAP crash tests cars and conducts performance assessments on safety features and technologies, then publish a simple star rating to indicate relative safety performance, along with a numerical score.
Over the last 30 years, ANCAP has published independent safety ratings for thousands of new vehicle makes, models and variants. These independent safety ratings are used to compare the relative safety between vehicles of similar size and have become a critical factor in vehicle selection for private consumers and fleet buyers.
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So, for 2022, the top three scoring vehicles are all extremely close, but with the highest score of 91.50 is the new-for-2022 Tesla Model Y, offering a suite of safety aspects including active and passive safety aids.
Watch the whole COTY show on Zooming with DRIVEN
Features include dual frontal, side chest-protecting and side head-protecting (curtain) airbag, a centre airbag for added protection to front seat occupants in side impact crashes, autonomous emergency braking (Car-to-Car, Vulnerable Road User, Junction Assist and Backover), a lane support system with lane keep assist (LKA), lane departure warning (LDW) and emergency lane keeping (ELK), and an advanced speed assistance system (SAS).
Runners up: Lexus NX (88.75pts), Mercedes-Benz C-Class (86.25pts).