NHTSA Delays Implementing Updates to the Five-Star Safety Ratings Program (NCAP)

On September 22, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published a notice delaying by one year the upcoming implementation date for two recent updates to the agency’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP).  This change illustrates NCAP’s continuing importance to manufacturers and NHTSA’s recent willingness to push back the compliance dates of completed rulemakings.

The NCAP Updates

NCAP, also often called the Five-Star Ratings program, is a voluntary program in which virtually all major auto manufacturers participate.  First established in 1978, NCAP establishes a series of criteria for measuring a vehicle’s safety level based on crash tests.  In particular, a vehicle is rated from one to five stars based on its performance in frontal crashes, side crashes, and rollovers.  These ratings are then combined into a single overall safety rating for the vehicle.

NCAP ratings are visible to the public, as any NCAP-rated vehicle on display in a showroom will have a sticker on its window showing the vehicle’s safety ratings.  More comprehensive information on a vehicle model’s safety ratings is also available on NHTSA’s website.

Because a low NCAP rating is immediately evident to any prospective buyer, most manufacturers strive to achieve favorable star ratings.  They design and test vehicles to ensure that, apart from meeting the minimum mandatory safety requirements established by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, the vehicles also meet the NCAP criteria.  As a result, the overwhelming majority of the top-selling vehicles in the United States — including passenger cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks — have four- or five-star overall safety ratings.

In late 2024, NHTSA finalized two updates to NCAP — the first major changes to the program in 16 years.  First, the program was updated to account for the protection of pedestrians.  NHTSA explained that, while overall auto crash fatalities in the United States have generally fallen in recent decades, pedestrian fatalities in crashes have increased markedly.  Historically, NCAP has focused only on the safety of vehicle occupants.  The update, which was heavily influenced by the European version of NCAP, set a minimum testing threshold for crashes involving pedestrians.  This NCAP update does not provide a star rating based on a vehicle’s effectiveness at pedestrian protection — rather, the new standard is a binary rating that depends on whether the vehicle achieves a minimum performance standard in crash testing.

The second NCAP update incorporated four new types of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) into the program: pedestrian automatic emergency braking, lane keeping assist, blind spot warning, and blind spot intervention.  It also updated the testing requirements and performance criteria for some other ADAS technologies that were already part of NCAP.  As with the pedestrian protection update, vehicles will be given a binary rating based on whether they have these ADAS technologies and meet specified performance criteria.  Moreover, those determinations will not be a factor in a vehicle’s overall star-based safety rating — which will continue to be based solely on the vehicle’s crashworthiness, rather than its effectiveness at avoiding crashes.  Rather, a vehicle will get separate credit, in the form of a “checkmark” on NHTSA’s website, if it has these ADAS features and they meet the requisite performance standards.

The One-Year Postponement

The updates, as finalized in 2024, were scheduled to begin applying to model year 2026 vehicles.  The notice published on September 22 postponed the implementation of the updates until model year 2027.

NHTSA indicated that it postponed implementation of the pedestrian protection update in part because of a delay in publishing the testing procedures for pedestrian protection.  The 2024 update did not itself include those procedures; rather, according to NHTSA, they will be published as a “follow-on” to the notice of postponement.

More broadly, NHTSA explained that “a one-year delay of the program enhancements will also allow the Agency time to complete ADAS and crashworthiness pedestrian protection validation testing of model year 2025 vehicles.” Completion of this validation testing will, according to the agency, allow it to make additional necessary modifications to the standards before the updates go into effect.  NHTSA also stated that the extra time will allow it to “make the necessary updates to the www.NHTSA.gov website to reflect the program changes and develop clear, consumer-friendly language that accurately communicates those changes.”

Manufacturers that have the requisite technology in their model year 2026 vehicles to meet the requirements in the ADAS update are not out of luck, however.  Though the program update as a whole is being postponed, NHTSA nonetheless announced that model year 2026 vehicles that meet the performance criteria for the new ADAS technologies will receive credit via a “checkmark.”  Moreover, vehicle models that achieve the checkmark for model year 2026 will automatically receive it for model year 2027 so long as they “have no changes to hardware or software such that their performance during NCAP’s updated ADAS tests is unchanged from one model year to the next.”

Takeaways

• The year-long postponement, above all, indicates the continuing importance of NCAP to the automotive industry and NHTSA’s recognition of the need for clear and predictable standard-setting. Though the published updates were already years in the making, NHTSA acknowledged it would be appropriate to take additional time to finalize the testing procedures and other aspects of the program before they take full effect.
• In addition, the NCAP announcement is another example of NHTSA pushing back a compliance date for a standard that it finalized in the previous administration. For example, the agency also recently announced, as part of its larger regulatory agenda, that it will propose pushing back by two years the initial compliance date on Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 127, which will mandate automatic emergency braking in light vehicles.
• The new standards established in the NCAP updates are, like all the criteria in NCAP ratings, highly technical and specific. Original equipment manufacturers and suppliers that would like to understand what it takes to achieve favorable ratings, and how the timelines for the recent updates will affect them, are well advised to consult with appropriate experts.

This post is as of the posting date stated above. Sidley Austin LLP assumes no duty to update this post or post about any subsequent developments having a bearing on this post.