Car safety

[caller]

Picking up on something I've been reading elsewhere, are cars sold in Thailand subject to an independent safety rating, as per the the european new car assessment programme (Euro NCAP)?

http://www.euroncap.com/home.aspx

Which basically uses the legal minimum safety requirements as its entry level and goes much higher, which the car companies aspire to achieve, as its now a standard piece of reporting in the car spec.

A poster elsewhere talks of seeing pick-up trucks that look sturdy crushed like crisp packets, so it made me wonder.

[Frank Hovis]

I believe the pick-ups imported to Europe from Mitsubishi, Toyota and Isuzu are all made here, the Nissan Navara for Europe is made in Spain. Except for interior and minor exterior changes (more airbags and different lights) plus the obvious left hand drive for most of Europe they are the same same trucks so the Euro NCAP tests will be broadly similar. Likewise most of the Japanese cars built here with a corresponding European version will be similar (again probably with fewer airbags) so the NCAP tests should be valid. Not all car manufacturers submit all models for Euro NCAP testing; many of the sports car manufacturers don't bother at all.

Bear in mind that the NCAP frontal crash tests are performed at about 60 kph into a deformable object. Here pickups are crashed into undeformable trees or concrete stanchions at 100kph and then hit again by a 20,000 kilo truck or bus for good measure. p=mv