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The need for a consumer information on car safety is growing steadily. Up to now, the consumer information about crash-tested new cars has been provided, but this should be supplemented by safety ratings based on real-world accidents which reflect all types of accident circumstances. The possibilities and limits of the necessary ""Quality Criteria for the Safety Assessment of Cars based on Real- World Crashes'' are analyzed in an EU project in cooperation of research institutes, industry and universities. The paper summarizes the results of three major objectives within this ""SARAC'' project. - The existing rating procedures worldwide have been analyzed and are described by their methods and the assessment criteria/crash parameters used.

This paper includes an overview of a collaborative research project of Improved Side Impact Protection (ISIP) that commenced in 1997. The research program was sponsored by the Australian Research Council and involved a partnership of industry, government and research agencies, both in Australia and overseas. The overall aim was to develop a new approach to optimizing vehicle design using Harm as the main outcome criteria. The program involved a number of research activities including mass data analysis, in-depth real-world crash investigations, simulation modelling and the development of a family of Injury Assessment Functions. The paper outlines the structure and progress of these activities, summarizes the results and provides an overview of the optimizer model emanating from this research.

Vehicle crash compatibility is of major interest in road safety research as it focuses on both vehicle crashworthiness and aggressivity. Most of the research into vehicle safety to date has focused on vehicle crashworthiness promoting vehicle designs that overlook the protection of occupants in the ‘other’ vehicle in a vehicle-to-vehicle collision. Most recently this issue has lead to the development of new methods of vehicle aggressivity rating. This study presents two proposed vehicle aggressivity rating methods. The ‘subject’ car aggressivity is estimated based on injury outcome to the driver of the ‘other’ vehicle involved in a two-vehicle collision. The logistic regression technique is applied in order to adjust risk of driver injury for a number of endogenous and exogenous factors. The ability of the methods to ‘rate’ vehicle models in terms of their aggressivity performance in two-vehicle crashes is briefly described.