June 2017 www.womanthismonth.com FEATURE | on the road 44 A car with a poor sound system, for example, may be irritating but it certainly won’t kill you. However, a vehicle with a poor safety rating? Well, it certainly won’t do you any favours should accidents occur. Fortunately, safety is an area in which the automotive industry is making huge strides. Tests and ratings are becoming more stringent than ever, which means manufacturers are hell bent on coming up with inventive ways to outdo each other, thus raising standards across the board. Technology has played an increasingly important role over the last few years and that trend looks set to continue. From sensors to radars, lane departure warnings to blind spot monitoring systems, cars are undeniably getting smarter. It can be overwhelming when you’re bombarded with statistics and figures from a plethora of sources, all telling you different things about the car you drive. Fortunately, the most widely recognised and trusted indicator of a vehicle’s safety credentials is its Euro NCAP rating. To the uninitiated the Euro NCAP (New Car Assessment Programme) consortium performs extensive testing of the crash There are a number of factors you need to consider when it comes to choosing a family car. Style, fuel economy, infotainment systems and engine variants all play key roles, but arguably the most important factor is safety. Safety First performances of new cars. Vehicles are crashed into obstacles head-on, side-on and slightly offset to one side. The cars are fitted with crash-test dummies covered in sensors, which tell researchers the forces applied to various body parts in an impact. The crash tests give a picture of the overall safety of the car - effectiveness of seatbelts and airbags as well as its body rigidity during a crash. The rating system is simple. A one star rating means the vehicle offers marginal crash protection whereas five stars mean your ride provides good performance and is well equipped with robust crash avoidance technology. According to the latest results posted on the company’s website, the best
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