ANCAP ratings will be overhauled from January next year, with sweeping changes to the way the safety body scores cars.
ANCAP changes its scoring regime once every three years, and 2026 will usher in a large array of changes, which will overhaul its four scoring categories: Adult Occupant Protection, Child Occupant Protection, Vulnerable Road User Protection and Safety Assist.
From January 2026, the new categories are designed to follow what ANCAP calls the ‘Stages of Safety’. These include Safe Driving, Crash Avoidance, Crash Protection and Post Crash.
ANCAP can automatically deduct stars for failing a requirement in one of these categories.
The new categories will shift ANCAP’s focus to emerging safety concerns on new vehicles. The Safe Driving category will focus on distracting driver aids and touchscreen-based core functions, which the current system has no mechanism for penalising.
The safety body is also placing more emphasis on the post crash category. Currently, automatic SOS functions are becoming more widespread, but ANCAP is also focusing on how easily high-voltage vehicles can be de-energised, and how easy it is to extract people from a crashed or submerged vehicle.
Crash avoidance and protection will encompass the existing categories, which assess the effectiveness of autonomous driving features, actual structural crash performance and the protection of occupants and vulnerable road users.
ANCAP’s Chief Executive Officer, Carla Hoorweg said: “In 2026 it’s a much more logical approach for the layperson, they’ll get what those things are and it shows the difference between crash avoidance and crash protection.
“We’d obviously rather prevent a crash from happening in the first place, but we’re still in a mixed fleet, we’re going to be for a long time. Not every car is going to have crash avoidance systems so you still need good protection for when you’re in a crash.”
The new standards will give ANCAP the ability to target frustrating safety systems and distracting touchscreen-based controls under the new ‘Safe Driving’ pillar.
“From 2026 there are going to be elements of that,” Hoorweg said.
“Driver distraction is a big focus. You’ve seen some of the commentary on buttons vs touchscreens, whether we get that specific in the 2026 protocol it’s a bit early to say, but that area as a focus area of the protocols is very live and there’s a lot of work going on around human machine interface and driver distraction.”
She said manufacturers should be on notice that it will be looking at touchscreen-based systems in the future: “They should be looking at systems which are helpful and support the driver rather than systems that are distracting or worse.”
The changes to ANCAP’s protocols follow comments by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) concerning physical controls.
"The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes,” said the ETSC.
ANCAP’s new pillar structure will also account for high voltage electrical components. It said the likelihood of a battery fire in a crash has proven to be extremely rare in its testing, and it’s actually the ‘thermal runaway’ effect in new high-voltage systems, which can cause a problematic fire in the days or weeks after an impact.
The new ‘Post Crash’ pillar is designed to account for this.
Currently it only assesses commercial vans in non-destructive tests, which measure ADAS performance, but said the introduction of this ‘medallion system’ separate from the star ratings of passenger cars had seen “rapid safety updates” across the segment.
ANCAP has come under criticism on occasion recently with some companies claiming it pushes a five-star or nothing narrative, and that tough decisions are often made to not import a vehicle, which may behave well in a crash test but will automatically be deducted stars for missing what some may consider to be relatively minor active safety features.
Hoorweg refuted these claims, stating ANCAP’s language remained “intentionally neutral” in its approach to the star ratings and that some of the arguments presented are “really about the commercial side for the manufacturer.”
She previously told CarsGuide: “Where manufacturers are often trying to push and say you should, you know, accept a lower standard, it’s where they’re taking product from another market that isn’t meeting that standard and trying to bring it in and sort of say, oh well, this should be okay. It’s very clear what you need to do to achieve five stars.”