What is Euro NCAP? A guide to car safety ratings

Survived a major car accident in the last 30 years? You’ll likely have Euro NCAP to thank for ensuring your car protected you, and others, in the crash.

Euro NCAP (or the Euro New Car Assessment Programme to give it its full name) was established in 1996 as an independent crash protection rating organisation for new cars sold in Europe and the UK.

But how does Euro NCAP crash testing work? What do the ratings mean for your car, and should you avoid buying a car with a poor Euro NCAP rating? Our expert guide runs through all you need to know.

• The safest cars on the market
• 10 safety features modern cars should have as standard

What is Euro NCAP and how does it work?

Euro NCAP is a voluntary, not-for-profit, new car safety assessment programme serving all European car buyers.

New cars are crash tested in simulated, lab-based real-world accident scenarios and awarded a star rating based on their performance.

Euro NCAP uses crash test dummies (acting as passengers or vulnerable road users) equipped with sensors to measure potential injuries.

Formed in 1996, it was originally launched by the UK Department for Transport and London-based Transport Research Laboratory.

It was later backed by the European Union along with motoring organisations such as the FIA and Swedish Road Administration, with operations moving to Brussels in 1998. Today, it has members all over Europe.

Euro NCAP doesn’t test all new cars due to the time and resources it would take. Instead, it chooses the most popular and interesting models in each market to evaluate.  

Generally, cars are selected for testing by Euro NCAP members because of their popularity or importance in certain markets.

The cars are bought anonymously through dealers through the same process as normal customers to ensure they are representative.

Car companies can sponsor their own cars for crash testing, but Euro NCAP will independently source the car.

If the car is not yet on sale, Euro NCAP will visit the manufacturing plant and select early production cars at random to avoid any possibility of cheating the tests.

Why do we need Euro NCAP?

Euro NCAP emerged in the mid-1990s at a time when car buyers didn’t have much solid evidence of how safe a new car is. Crash testing was already a thing in the USA, but things weren’t as advanced in Europe.

Despite the eighties and nineties seeing new safety improvements, such as mandatory seat belt wearing and more common fitment of airbags, motorists involved in crashes were still dying and suffering serious injuries at an unacceptable rate.

The only mandated ‘crash test’ before Euro NCAP was a 30mph frontal crash, which gave little indication of how a car’s structure would protect occupants in other situations

Outside of this, car buyers could only go by the safety claims made by manufacturers. They also couldn’t compare the safety of one car with a competitor.

When the first cars were tested by Euro NCAP in 1997 there was some shocking performances. The most notable is the Rover 100, a formerly popular car that was only awarded one star in crash testing serious problems with the steering wheel impacting on the crash test dummy and ‘excessive intrusion’ in the passenger compartment.

Other hugely popular new cars, such as the Volkswagen Polo, Nissan Micra and Vauxhall Corsa, were criticised for poor occupant protection and the car’s structure buckling in an impact. That’s despite all these cars meeting legal safety standards at the time.

For Rover, the one-star result was so severe that the 100 was taken out of production just a year later due to plummeting sales.

Safety standards quickly improved under. Just five months later, Volvo achieved what some carmakers had called ‘impossible’ with a four-star rating on the S40. Soon after, the maximum rating was increased to five stars and, in 2001, the Renault Laguna was the first car to achieve that.

Many governments and safety bodies credit Euro NCAP with dramatically improving the expected standard for safety, spurring car companies to invest billions in stronger, tougher cars and new technologies. Without that pressure, we’d have likely seen many more road fatalities and serious injuries in the last 30 years than we did.

How do Euro NCAP crash tests work?

The first Euro NCAP crash tests were conducted at an independent laboratory in 1997, and focused on the following tests:

• A frontal impact at 40mph against a deformable barrier
• A side impact test, where a stationary car was hit by a deformable barrier at 30mph on the driver’s door
• Pedestrian safety testing

These tests were closely filmed and analysed, with crash test dummies monitored during the impacts.

Since then, Euro NCAP’s testing and assessment standards have dramatically expanded. Our timeline gives a guide of when key Euro NCAP advances were made:

What do Euro NCAP star ratings mean?

Today’s Euro NCAP ratings range from zero to five stars, with zero being the lowest grade possible.

Even zero-star cars meet the minimum standard to be type approved for sale, so it is up to consumers to check their potential new car is safe.

• Zero (0)-star Euro NCAP rating: Demonstrates very poor performance in crash testing, as well as lacking critical safety technology expected in modern cars
• 1-star Euro NCAP rating: May offer some basic crash protection, but very little in the way of crash avoidance or safety assist technology
• 2 or 3-star Euro NCAP rating: The minimum standard most car manufacturers aim to meet. Two-star cars may still lack critical crash avoidance technology and offer only marginal crash protection, while three-star cars are better at protecting occupants but may still lack some key features
• 4-star Euro NCAP rating: This is generally considered good. Four-star cars will perform well in crash tests and offer plenty of safety assist features, but will be marked down in the odd area
• 5-star Euro NCAP rating: The highest score available. These typically offer top-notch crash protection and come with a vast array of safety aids to greatly reduce the chance of you having a crash in the first place

How safe is my car and what is its Euro NCAP rating?

It’s easy to find out how safe your car is using Euro NCAP’s website. Here, you’ll be able to find the results of some of the most common new or used cars tested over the last three decades.

Each test published will have plenty of analysis, supporting evidence and (usually) images and video of the car being crash tested. You can also check the safest cars tested each year and the ‘best-in-class’ rating for each category of car.

As Euro NCAP introduces stricter standards over time, many star ratings are marked as ‘expired’ after a few years. That doesn’t mean the car is any less safe than it was – it just means that the standards have improved since it was tested.

You can check on the Euro NCAP website when the test was conducted, whether any retests were done and when the rating expired.

What are the safest cars on sale?

Every year Euro NCAP publishes a list of the safest cars it tested across the previous year. For 2025, six cars stood out for their crash test performance. They were:

• Mercedes-Benz CLA – Safest small family car
• Mini Cooper Electric – Safest city car/supermini
• Tesla Model 3 – Safest large family car
• Tesla Model Y – Safest small SUV
• Polestar 3 – Safest Executive car
• Smart #5 – Safest large SUV