Independent safety assessment organisation Euro NCAP has announced the safest cars of 2015, including the safest overall, safest large family car and safest large MPV.
Volvo took home the best honours for having the safest car overall with the new XC90, which scored what Euro NCAP called ‘an outstanding’ 97 per cent rating for adult occupant protection.
The XC90 also scored a maximum 100 per cent for its safety assist technologies, bettering every car in the ‘Best in Class cars of 2015 list’ by a significant margin, and 87 per cent for child occupant protection.
Winning the small off-road category was the Mercedes-Benz GLC, which scored 95 per cent for adult occupation protection, 89 per cent for child occupant protection, 82 per cent for pedestrian safety and 71 per cent for safety assist.
Jaguar’s XE scored the same as the Toyota Avensis XE in the large family car category, although Euro NCAP pointed out the XE boasts its safety technologies as standard but the Avensis is cheaper and has some available as optional extras.
The small family car category was topped by the Infiniti Q30, which managed to offer one of the best performance when it came to pedestrian protection, with a score of 91 per cent.
Meanwhile the Honda Jazz and Suzuki Vitara scored the same in the supermini category, with both bettering one another in different areas, but Euro NCAP gave first place to the former because of ‘Honda’s fitment strategy for advanced safety systems’.
Rounding off the winners was the best large MPV (Ford Galaxy), narrowly beating the Renault Espace to the post, best small MPV (Volkswagen Touran) and the best roadster, which went to the Mazda MX-5.
No roadster achieved five stars, but the MX-5’s four-star rating was enough to make it the safest in class. Euro NCAP noted a general lack of ‘new avoidance technology’ as the category’s biggest pitfall.
British, German, Japanese and Swedish were the class-leaders in 2015, it said. In 2016 a new assessment of automatic emergency braking (AEB) pedestrian systems will make it harder to score five stars, with more expensive cars already packing the technology likely to benefit.
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