[sunikkat]

It’s BAU for VAG. If your priorities are safety, performance and fun to drive, you can’t go wrong with any VAG cars.

[animishticomb]

Can any knowledgable person please shed some light on what 5* rating means in real life? Like is the driver 20% more probable to survive vs a 4* rating car or is it like 100% more probability? Similarly any stats on co-passenger/back passenger safety?

[shreyan_k10]

Originally Posted by animishticomb

Can any knowledgable person please shed some light on what 5* rating means in real life? Like is the driver 20% more probable to survive vs a 4* rating car or is it like 100% more probability? Similarly any stats on co-passenger/back passenger safety?

It simply means how a particular car has performed against certain pre-defined parameters in a simulated crash scenario. How it would perform in the event of a crash depends on multiple other factors. Nevertheless, as a consumer one would always opt for the car that has got higher safety rating, won't they? Given the two cars in question are similar w.r.t. price, features and performance.

[Deamon0508]

Originally Posted by animishticomb

Can any knowledgable person please shed some light on what 5* rating means in real life? Like is the driver 20% more probable to survive vs a 4* rating car or is it like 100% more probability? Similarly any stats on co-passenger/back passenger safety?

I simulated automotive crash tests for a living for a good 4 years, my two cents

TL;DR: There is no direct correlation between chance of survival and the crash safety rating. A 5-star Volvo would be toast at a 100km/h impact, but you'll have higher chance of survival in a 3-star Celerio if the speed and angle of impact is within what the car was designed for (64km/h and 40% frontal offset in Indian scenario).

There's no direct correlation between the chance of survival and the safety rating of the vehicle. The higher the number stars, your chances of being unscathed, or have minor injuries is definitely better. Having said that, the difference between 3 stars and 5 stars is much greater than 4 stars and 5 stars.

I have seen 5-star cars fail miserably in crash scenarios apart from the one the vehicle for designed for (angle of impact, % offset, or even 10% greater impact speed), and I have seen 4-star cars hold up admirably in tests at speeds and scenarios which aren't a part of the standard crash testing.

To me personally, while having a 5-star safety rating does provide some degree of peace of mind, the ultimate safety factor is a bit earlier in the value chain, at the brand level. Let me clarify, a 5-star Dzire will still garner lower confidence in my books as compared to a 4-star Ford/VAG/Tata/Mahindra.
There are dedicated teams to finding workarounds for cars to ace crash tests, and more conscientious brands have their own internal standards of BIW rigidity, that often exceed the homologation requirements. Compliance with these internal standards, such as Pillar deformation, Firewall intrusion or hip-point relocation under crash tests contribute far more to passenger safety under randomized crashes, than specific member (longitudinal or cross-member) added for additional rigidity for achieving a 5-star car.

If you're driving in India, the best safety feature is an idol atop the dashboard to align your stars for the types of drivers, road conditions or obstacles that you may encounter, and give you the best chance of survival. And don't over-speed (or under-speed, now that I think about it).

[animishticomb]

Mod Note : Please quote ONLY the relevant bits of a post. Quoting a full, long post inconveniences our mobile readers.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Deamon0508

I simulated automotive crash tests for a living for a good 4 years, my two cents.

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer....really helps me understand a bit more apart from just a star as I am a complete noob in cars

[twincharger_gt]

Skoda makes some great cars. It's always been the case, even their most localised cars are a treat to drive and designed well at least to my eyes. The problem remains execution. They will get a good product but within 2 years it will be outdated w.r.t features. They just take too much time for updates or facelifts. Their so called India 2.0 still needs much needed updates versus the competition. For all the modularity the MQB A0 27 IN provides if it cannot be used for at least another facelift, then surely there is a problem with the design. Hybrids are not possible and putting ADAS level 2 also seems challenging due to the way electricals are managed (rumour). Similarly their CKDs also take almost double the time compared to the Koreans for whatever little localizations they do. The new facelifted Kodiaqs are on European roads since last May, and it will take them this June if they are launched as planned. Well for the service experience the lesser said the better at least in Bangalore. I have spent more hours at Skoda service stations to accompany my friend for his Superb service in last 4 years than my own Honda’s service. This comes from someone who just loves to see cars getting serviced the whole time it is with the service station.

[sunikkat]

Originally Posted by twincharger_gt

for the service experience the lesser said the better at least in Bangalore. I have spent more hours at Skoda service stations to accompany my friend for his Superb service in last 4 years than my own Honda’s service. This comes from someone who just loves to see cars getting serviced the whole time it is with the service station.

Sorry for your friends experience. It’s other way for me in Bangalore. For my Octavia, for the 6 years I was using Tafe Skoda (until I shifted to a FNG), I had the best experience. Even better than Hyundai, Maruti, Ford etc. There were instances where they proactively owned up their mistake and fixed things, which would have gone unnoticed (say the windshield got a small crack). Even Skoda in Trivandrum was also super supportive in couple of instances.

[Asish_VK]

Originally Posted by Deamon0508

If you're driving in India, the best safety feature is an idol atop the dashboard to align your stars for the types of drivers, road conditions or obstacles that you may encounter, and give you the best chance of survival.

This is gold

I've always been vocal about how much misleading is the whole '5* safety ratings' to my colleagues. Thanks to the effective PR and advertisements, many of my non petrol head friends thinks that they are "safe & invincible" if they buy a 5* rated car.
I have tried to explain them many times that just a crash rating under controlled environment is not the real definition of safety and importance of active safety features, structural integrity, dynamics & seat belts . All I got was some weird looks from them
(PS: I'm not against crash tests / ratings. I agree this is step in right direction and I do hope for more & more strict tests for safety ratings)

[ashvek3141]

Originally Posted by Deamon0508

To me personally, while having a 5-star safety rating does provide some degree of peace of mind, the ultimate safety factor is a bit earlier in the value chain, at the brand level. Let me clarify, a 5-star Dzire will still garner lower confidence in my books as compared to a 4-star Ford/VAG/Tata/Mahindra.
There are dedicated teams to finding workarounds for cars to ace crash tests, and more conscientious brands have their own internal standards of BIW rigidity, that often exceed the homologation requirements.

Thanks for putting this across. This is exactly what majority of the folks need to hear.

I too share the same thoughts on the 5* stars rating of the Dzire. It practically means nothing to me.

[saket77]

Originally Posted by ashvek3141

Thanks for putting this across. This is exactly what majority of the folks need to hear.

I too share the same thoughts on the 5* stars rating of the Dzire. It practically means nothing to me.

Your 'thoughts' of Dzire 5* rating meaning nothing is biased a little too much.
In terms of scoring points in protection, the new Dzire beats even the Virtus or probably any Indian VW (or Skoda), which according to many is the epitome of safety. Let that sink in for a while.

In fact, new Dzire points beats most of the cars sold in India. It has been established very early that it is the construction, design and engineering of the platform that brings crash test safety and not thicker superficial sheet metals. Yes, there are a lot of loop holes in NCAP testing which *all* companies try to exploit to achieve higher points and stars- some of the parameters are ridiculous to say the least even resulting in bad rating of even good cars in first place.

But people criticizing Maruti for faring poorly in the same crash tests & going gaga over 4*/5* ratings of Tata/ Mahindra/ VW/ Skoda earlier and now saying all these test results are worthless when a Maruti scores stupendously is nothing but double standards.

[itsbaman]

While having two safe cars at home makes me feel little bit secure, I understand that no safety rating can save me from my own stupidity or the stupidity of some rowdy racing on road.
In India, biggest need of the hour is people’s understanding about driving. What I have witnessed from my 20 years of driving, that people have become reckless, impatient and driving has become a way of showing authority (specially rowdys driving big bad SUVs), and unfortunately, IMHO, while I love my indigenous car manufacturers, both have given means to those rowdys in terms of bigger and bigger cars and their 5 star safety ratings is being treated as a licence to create a ruckus on road.
In short, safety ratings can’t work without drivers coming to their senses.

[somersault]

It is true that the safety of the driver and the passenger depend on multiple factors like a) Following rules by the driver of your vehicle, b) following rules by the fellow vehicles, c)Obeying speed limits, d) safer roads and surfaces, e) car maintenance/ tyres/ fuel etc. f) seat belts wearing, g) air bags deployment at the time of impact, h) and structural integrity, not necessary in this order.

In no world one can assume that a 5 star safety means the driver can drive like a maniac, not wear a seat belt on a non suitable road conditions and not maintain the tyres etc.

The question is, if most of the other variables are in your control, will the the structure and related protections systems hold good to protect you in majority of the cases, with least damage to you and the passenger on the road or in the other vehicle.

The 5 star rating gives the confidence in that department.

There are reasons that the Air bags are called SRS (Supplemental restraint System) and seat belt are called PRS (Primary restraint System). If you do not have your seat belts on, none of the ratings will be useful. So having the systems in place with good ratings and following the rules, both are important.

[Deamon0508]

Originally Posted by saket77

But people criticizing Maruti for faring poorly in the same crash tests & going gaga over 4*/5* ratings of Tata/ Mahindra/ VW/ Skoda earlier and now saying all these test results are worthless when a Maruti scores stupendously is nothing but double standards.

Utter hush hush, but as it happens, the big S is one of the brands I simulated crash tests for, in Japan, at their HQ
I've worked with their corporate thinktank long enough to tell you that Dzire's new crash rating, without a shadow of doubt, makes it miles better than the outgoing version, but the overall KPI is acing the crash test, and not number of fatalities per vehicle sold (this is arbitrary, only for an explanation). The whole point is whether a vehicle is safe-safe, or safe under crash test scenarios.
In terms of analogy, Dieselgate comes rather quickly to mind. You can design a car to perform better under stringent test conditions, in terms of crash, you can tune the stiffness of long members and their topology to best absorb impact from the honeycomb structure, or a rigid flat wall. But what happens when the same car goes in the underside of a parked tractor-trailer, or has a 40% overlap with a rigid wall, or what happens when the speeds at 10% more than the crash test scenarios, is an unknown. Certain manufacturers don't account for it, and certain ones do.
Take Volvo for instance, they have long targeted being the safest car on the road, which it pretty much is, until a multi-ton trailer topples over the bodyshell, there's nothing you can do about it. No amount of engineering can account for such uncertainty.
Going back to your point, I understand that it's not fair to discount Maruti's 5-star versus Tata/Mahindra/VAG, a lot of engineers have put their sweat and blood to bring together the million different parts into a cost-effective and reliable automobile. But I still think that as a consumer, we do need to think about what ethos have driven the design fundamentally.
The future of BNCAP, as I see it, is inclusion of multiple other tests. Because the vehicle structures built to withstand myriad crash safety scenarios is more likely to survive a random loadcase. For instance, a small overlap test would be closely related to performance under rollover, because it's the Pillar stiffness that bears the brunt of it.
<Peaceout>

[RYP]

Originally Posted by Deamon0508

I simulated automotive crash tests for a living for a good 4 years, my two cents

TL;DR: There is no direct correlation between chance of survival and the crash safety rating. A 5-star Volvo would be toast at a 100km/h impact, but you'll have higher chance of survival in a 3-star Celerio if the speed and angle of impact is within what the car was designed for (64km/h and 40% frontal offset in Indian scenario).

If you're driving in India, the best safety feature is an idol atop the dashboard to align your stars for the types of drivers, road conditions or obstacles that you may encounter, and give you the best chance of survival. And don't over-speed (or under-speed, now that I think about it).

Fellow Crash Analysis Engineer here. Been in the trade for 12+ years now. I've been vocal in my social circle exactly about this for years now and no one gives a double thought. People are conditioned in such a way that 5 stars means it is built like a tank inside out, literally. Hence the expectation is even if i hit someone my car won't take damage. This is literally the numbest brained thinking going around en-masse. External body panels are not designed to withstand any damage, only the structural frame parts in the load carrying paths are the real mvp's.

There are cars designed for safety and cars engineered to just get the 5 star rating. We as a country fall in the later. NCAP Crash Tests are for extremely specific scenarios, few mm there and few degrees here would completely change the end result. Now imagine applying this to real world. We have no control over the colliding object's size, shape, speed or angle. Its completely arbitrary. These stars mean next to nothing in real world conditions. OEM's knows this and just milks everyone like there is no tomorrow with their marketing anyway. This has given a false sense of security and nett-nett is a deterrent to the society as a whole

Now cars designed for Safety are an entirely different ball game, they are tested structurally inside out for all possible outcomes well beyond the NCAP speed limits and barriers. Obviously these costs a lot more due to increased R&D and productions costs. For that we as a market may or may not be ready to shell out a significant sum just for safety. Until that level of safety comes to fruition lets drive safe and high time we stop boasting about the 5 star stuff that their car got. Its beyond cringe

[king999]

An NCAP safety rating "under controlled circumstances" is of the same nature as the car milage efficiency figures that get published "under controlled circumstances". Neither translate fully in real-world conditions. But having said that you'd still want to be seated inside a safer and efficient car than not.