Australia's worst and best used car safety ratings

There are ANCAP safety ratings for new cars, but what about used cars?

Monash University’s Vehicle Safety Research Group has teamed up with Australia’s auto clubs and state road authorities to give 289 different used vehicles a safety rating.

Like ANCAP, the 2021 Used Car Safety Ratings (UCSR) range from one to five stars.

Unlike ANCAP, which subjects new cars to a testing regimen that culminates in cars getting smashed into barriers, the used car safety ratings are instead based on independent analysis of real-world crash statistics.

That means instead of setting criteria and benchmarks for expected performance, the UCSR is about looking at how vehicles on Australian roads perform relative to each other.

The team at Monash looks at a person’s risk of death or serious injury in a crash and how that relates to the type of vehicle they’re driving, collecting data from police crash reports as well as from vehicle registers.

Demographic factors are taken into account in the analysis, with ratings adjusted based on:

• Gender
• Age
• Number of vehicles involved in the crash
• Crash location
• Crash year
• Speed limit

The complex statistical analysis sets aside the risk of being involved in a crash in the first place, which is influenced by factors like the vehicle’s technology, the driver’s behaviour, the road environment or the condition of the vehicle.

“There’s X number of these vehicles involved in a crash, [and we look at] what proportion of the drivers were killed or seriously injured in this vehicle versus that vehicle after you’ve taken all the other factors into account,” said associate professor Stuart Newstead of the Monash University Accident Research Centre.

The team look primarily at the protection for a driver, considering a majority of the time vehicles on the road have only a single occupant, but it also looks at the chance of you being injured by this car as a pedestrian, cyclist or other road user.

The relative popularity of a vehicle has no impact on its rating in the report, other than to ensure its presence. For example, lower-volume vehicles from the likes of Chery and Ferrari don’t feature on the report as there’s less accident data available.

The team also awards Safer Pick ratings, which also take into account the risk of death or serious injury to other road users and the likelihood of an accident based on the crash avoidance technology fitted.

“A driver of the worst vehicle rated is over eight times more likely to be killed or seriously injured in the same crash than the same driver in the safest vehicle,” said Associate Professor Newstead.

The report notes 64 per cent of vehicle fatalities in 2020 occurred in vehicles aged 10 years or older, while the average risk of serious injury or death in a 2019 vehicle is around 47 per cent less than a 2000 vehicle and 61 per cent less than a vehicle manufactured prior to 1990.

“What the used car safety ratings then also do is reflect naturally some of the things that happen in the fleet,” said Associate Professor Newstead.

“If you’re driving a very small car, you’re at a disadvantage in the real world because you’re getting hit by a lot heavier things so the crash energy that you sustain is more, and so that vehicle has to work harder.

“As you see in the Used Car Safety Ratings, more of the bigger cars score well because in the real world that’s what happens. If you’re in a Suzuki Swift getting hit by a LandCruiser 200 Series, you’d probably prefer to be in a LandCruiser 200.

“That’s not to say if you want a light car you shouldn’t buy one, but you should be conscious of what that means when you take it out on the road.

“And I think it’s particularly pertinent for when you’re, for example, shopping for a car for a novice driver who as you know has a very high crash risk, you want to know how they’re going to perform in the real world.”

Associate Professor Newstead says given the lower ratings for most light cars, it would be wise to instead go up a size when buying a used car and look at, for example, a used Ford Focus.

While a car assessed by ANCAP keeps its star rating until it’s tested again, every vehicle in the UCSR is updated annually. As cars get safer and safer, what was once a five-star car could slip down in the ratings.

In addition to analysing the data for the UCSR, the Vehicle Safety Research Group also produces research on safety features.

Here’s a rundown of the Used Car Safety Ratings:

Light cars

Small cars

Medium cars

Large cars

Small SUVs

Medium SUVs

Large SUVs

People movers

Vans

Utes

MORE: ANCAP ratings: everything you need to know MORE: Australia’s best-selling cars without ANCAP ratings MORE: What’s next for ANCAP?