Since 1996, advancements in vehicle safety driven by Euro NCAP rating assessments have prevented an estimated 135,000 fatalities.  

With over 1,000 vehicles assessed and a reach covering 20% of the global market, Euro NCAP has evolved from a consumer information initiative into a fundamental driver of automotive safety innovation. 

While Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are demonstrably effective at mitigating collisions, their transition to mandatory fitment has surfaced a longstanding critical challenge: driver acceptance. A recurring observation within the industry is the high rate of manual deactivation. If a system is perceived as intrusive or prone to "nuisance alerts" (false positives), users frequently disable it. 

This is particularly evident with Lane Keep Assist (LKA). Drivers often experience frustration when the system intervenes during intentional manoeuvres, such as "hugging" the line for better visibility, cutting a corner on a clear curve, or overtaking without a signal. When deactivated by the user, the functional benefit drops to zero. Therefore, it is imperative that future ADAS are not only robust but "intelligent" enough to stay active without causing driver irritation. 

To address the issue of driver acceptance, Euro NCAP will place greater emphasis on Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) to refine system interventions.

By analysing driver gaze, head position, and engagement levels, the vehicle can differentiate between an unintentional lane departure and an intentional manoeuvre. That is to say that if the driver is focused and engaged, the system can suppress Forward Collision Warnings (FCW) or moderate LKA torque, recognising a conscious choice.

Conversely, if the DMS detects distraction or fatigue, the system maintains full intervention authority or even increases the activation distance or TTC (Time-To-Collision). 

The WHO (World Health Organisation) consistently reports that road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years globally. A shocking statistic universally undisputed except for in the U.S. where this number 1 spot has recently traded places with firearms (homicide and suicide); but on a global scale, the car remains the biggest threat to young life. 

For a Newly Qualified Driver (NQD) the car is statistically one of the most dangerous places you can be - with 1 in 5 drivers being involved in a crash in their first 12 months. So, why do we put our most vulnerable, inexperienced drivers in the least safe cars? Affordability makes it almost impossible to do otherwise given that the highest insurance premiums are aimed at this demographic, and the safest vehicles are often the more luxurious.  

Euro NCAP has campaigned for a long time for ‘safety for everyone’, ensuring that only cars with standard fit safety systems are rewarded; and although innovations in ADAS technologies advanced by Euro NCAP could intervene appropriately in such fatal collisions, the high insurances on new vehicles means that NQD are often priced out of these “luxuries”.  

Youth Key is a technology hoping to reduce this burden to NQD. It is a separate vehicle key that can be programmed for a new driver. It can limit the vehicle performance, enforce seatbelt use and remove some of the more socially unacceptable areas such as restricting the maximum volume of the stereo to 50%. 

The hope of instigating such a technology is that insurance premiums will fall dramatically for NQD, this could mean that one day insurance premiums on a £85k Volvo XC90 (a vehicle that nobody has had a fatal accident in since 2004) could be comparable to a 2002 Ford Fiesta.

Euro NCAP has identified these systems as an area for future research, with the aim of assessing real-world safety benefit using accident data. This is not yet written into the protocols as research is expected from 2026; with any possible conclusion considered closer to 2029, depending on the demonstrated safety benefit from standardising such a technology. 

Euro NCAP has always used real-world accidentology data to develop their assessments and ensure that the test scenarios remain representative of on-road behaviour.  
More recently, through collaboration with the Data for Road Safety initiative, anonymised vehicle data is analysed to understand when and how ADAS systems activate in real-world scenarios. This data is not used for direct scoring but could be used to inform future protocol development and, if required, modify existing protocols.

Unlike ‘on-the-spot’  accidentology which relies on investigating an accident after it has occurred and as such, the ADAS system to have failed to avoid the incident, the DFRS uses ‘triggers’ from the OEM’s and infrastructure on ADAS activation, ABS activation, weather conditions etc. to inform even when the accident was avoided. This will allow for many magnitudes more examples than previous accidentology data in addition to not skewing the data only to where the ADAS system failed to avoid the incident.