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Is it possible to receive negative stars?

by soheil 5y ago

gambiting 5y ago
No - zero stars is still legally allowed to be sold. If it were to get below 0 stars, as in - actively unsafe - then it would not receive certification at all and not be allowed for sale(and in fact there were some cars that have been refused certification in the EU, some chinese designs that basically offered zero crumple zones and folded on themselves in a crash, that kind of thing)
- tialaramex 5y ago
  All of these programmes, NCAP, EuroNCAP, and others like them around the world, are entirely advisory. The government makes rules for what you can sell, but the safety standards involved are much less stringent than you'd see in these advisory programmes. In some cases the same test centres are used (since after all they have the equipment) but the tests done are way easier than for say EuroNCAP. For example it has been years since the point where you weren't going to get anywhere in the advisory tests without airbags, but most places they aren't a legal requirement for new cars (there is often a rule saying they must work if they are fitted but no requirement to fit them). The funding is very different. For your car to be legal to sell new (at volume) you must pass the government tests, including in many countries a single destructive (ie writes off the car) test, and the government won't pay for that. If, say, Volvo, decided it wasn't interested in the UK market now that they're non-EU, it needn't submit new Volvo models, and then such new models just can't be sold in the UK no matter how safe they obviously are. In contrast the advisory tests are voluntary, often a manufacturer will pay for their products to be tested e.g. they might say to EuroNCAP, "We made a new mid-range family car, you can buy a basic model for about €40k so here's €40k" and then EuroNCAP buys a suitable model from a dealer (this avoid the scenario where a manufacturer ships the tester a specially hardened test vehicle) with their €40k and runs tests. But they don't have to pay, if Volvo decided they hate these tests, and won't pay for them, but they still provide cars for government tests, either the advisory test outfits buy the cars with their own funds or they don't test the Volvo models any more, but either way they are still legal to buy. I mentioned above that volume matters because of destructive testing. If you build your own car, from scratch, in most places the government says OK, fine, nobody does that, and obviously it's probably a death trap, but clearly there's only one of these we can't very well destructively test that one, so long as you meet some very basic requirements (e.g. no ludicrously over-size vehicles, nothing that's obviously going to kill other road users) you can drive that, although you may not be allowed to sell it to anybody as a car.
sokoloff 5y ago
Maybe the Saturday Night Live Lexon Paradox? (This is difficult to find the video online, probably due to the close name of Lexon vs Lexus.) “another [team] designed it to shatter on impact, throwing passengers up to 300 yards.” https://snltranscripts.jt.org/94/94bparadox.phtml https://snltranscripts.jt.org/94/94bparadox.phtml

Is it possible to receive negative stars?

by soheil 5y ago

Is it possible to receive negative stars?

No - zero stars is still legally allowed to be sold. If it were to get below 0 stars, as in - actively unsafe - then it would not receive certification at all and not be allowed for sale(and in fact there were some cars that have been refused certification in the EU, some chinese designs that basically offered zero crumple zones and folded on themselves in a crash, that kind of thing)

tialaramex 5y ago
All of these programmes, NCAP, EuroNCAP, and others like them around the world, are entirely advisory. The government makes rules for what you can sell, but the safety standards involved are much less stringent than you'd see in these advisory programmes. In some cases the same test centres are used (since after all they have the equipment) but the tests done are way easier than for say EuroNCAP. For example it has been years since the point where you weren't going to get anywhere in the advisory tests without airbags, but most places they aren't a legal requirement for new cars (there is often a rule saying they must work if they are fitted but no requirement to fit them). The funding is very different. For your car to be legal to sell new (at volume) you must pass the government tests, including in many countries a single destructive (ie writes off the car) test, and the government won't pay for that. If, say, Volvo, decided it wasn't interested in the UK market now that they're non-EU, it needn't submit new Volvo models, and then such new models just can't be sold in the UK no matter how safe they obviously are. In contrast the advisory tests are voluntary, often a manufacturer will pay for their products to be tested e.g. they might say to EuroNCAP, "We made a new mid-range family car, you can buy a basic model for about €40k so here's €40k" and then EuroNCAP buys a suitable model from a dealer (this avoid the scenario where a manufacturer ships the tester a specially hardened test vehicle) with their €40k and runs tests. But they don't have to pay, if Volvo decided they hate these tests, and won't pay for them, but they still provide cars for government tests, either the advisory test outfits buy the cars with their own funds or they don't test the Volvo models any more, but either way they are still legal to buy. I mentioned above that volume matters because of destructive testing. If you build your own car, from scratch, in most places the government says OK, fine, nobody does that, and obviously it's probably a death trap, but clearly there's only one of these we can't very well destructively test that one, so long as you meet some very basic requirements (e.g. no ludicrously over-size vehicles, nothing that's obviously going to kill other road users) you can drive that, although you may not be allowed to sell it to anybody as a car.

sokoloff 5y ago

Maybe the Saturday Night Live Lexon Paradox? (This is difficult to find the video online, probably due to the close name of Lexon vs Lexus.) “another [team] designed it to shatter on impact, throwing passengers up to 300 yards.” https://snltranscripts.jt.org/94/94bparadox.phtml https://snltranscripts.jt.org/94/94bparadox.phtml