How did you get involved in car safety?

When I was very young, in the 1960s, I was a complete petrolhead. If you met me when I was 15 and asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I wanted to race.

The top driver of the age was Jim Clark, a Scot who won the Indy 500 as well as Formula 1. In those days, racing was spectacularly dangerous. Clark was killed in 1968 in a crash that was absolutely awful — no barrier, straight into trees, no seatbelt. So at a very early age, I had a rather brutal awareness of vehicle dynamics, risk and safety. It stuck with me

At that time — the 1990s — what was the status of European vehicle safety?

The US was ahead. Europe hadn’t upgraded its crash standards since the 1970s. The European car industry had adopted this classic strategy of deny, deflect and delay.

They’d claim new tests weren’t needed, or they’d come up with new tests that were utterly rubbish. To make a long story short, we defeated the car industry and got what we wanted, which was front and side crash tests introduced for the first time.

In fact, the late 1990s were a double whammy for the European car industry, because beyond those standards we also introduced Euro NCAP, which they bitterly opposed.

That’s the European New Car Assessment Program — Europe’s version of the crash ratings that rank the safety of individual vehicle models.

Right. I served on the board of Euro NCAP through the 2000s. Around 2009 we realized there are opportunities to do more safety work in emerging markets, and I ended up leading Global NCAP, which has launched and funded NCAP programs around the world.

In 2010 we created Latin NCAP, working initially with a road safety NGO in Uruguay called the Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation. Now there’s also ASEAN NCAP in Southeast Asia as well as programs in India and Africa, each of which has different standards. NCAP programs also exist in Australia, China, and Japan.

My view is that the more governments around the world can coalesce around a common framework of vehicle standards, the better it is for industry because they can capitalize on economies of scale. Right now, regulatory standards in emerging markets are playing catch-up as those countries absorb a huge expansion in vehicle fleets.

It’s important to get emerging markets to embrace common standards shared with high-income countries; otherwise we’ll get a two-tiered world of car safety.

That is what has been especially satisfying about the progress in India, where the car market has been totally transformed over the last decade, when crash ratings began. Cars there are now on a par with Europe or the US in terms of protection.

You were deeply involved in the establishment of India’s NCAP program. When you started developing it in the early 2010s, how many Indian cars flunked crash tests?

Almost all of them did.

At the time, the most popular model in India was a Maruti Suzuki Alto, a death trap with no airbags and a very unsafe structure. It would be illegal to sell it in the US, Europe or Japan. But when we launched Indian crash test ratings, people told us there was no market for safety features like airbags. Indian consumers are far too cost-conscious, the tests aren’t relevant to local market conditions, blah, blah, blah.

What happened when you unveiled Indian crash ratings?

The media coverage of models failing the tests was extraordinary; it was front-page news. At the time, there was a new Indian government that took the issue seriously. That summer, the rural affairs minister was killed in a car crash in Delhi. In the cabinet meetings, there was an empty chair where he would have sat. The next year, the government announced they would upgrade Indian vehicle safety standards.

Today, India’s bestselling car is the Tata Punch, which is a five-star car. You could sell it comfortably in any global market.

That’s an interesting example of crash test ratings — which are consumer information, not regulations — affecting vehicle laws. How often does that happen?

The more advanced safety features typically start off in the luxury and premium brands, without regulation.

For Volvo, Mercedes and so on, those features are part of their marketing.

But when you get to the mass market brands, where price competitiveness is much tougher, new technologies like electronic stability control can stall. At that point NCAPs can build momentum to require such features. That’s a very common cycle that we’ve seen around the world.

Ultimately, if you want safe features throughout the whole car market, you’ve got to regulate.

Why are there so many NCAP programs around the world, instead of just one global standard?

If you take Euro NCAP, which is the most advanced program, they’re looking at things like bicycle sensors that are state of the art. If you tried to do that immediately in a place like Latin America, you’re going too fast and too far.

What do you mean by that?

In emerging markets, cars that have such features aren’t available. The danger is that you make the five-star rating unreachable, and then you deny the manufacturers an incentive to even try. The solution is to upgrade standards periodically. Over time, I expect they will gradually converge as markets mature.

In the developing world, do critics argue that it’s wrong to require some safety features that make cars more expensive, because people may prefer affordability?

Yes, we hear that all the time. Our first response is that the science behind crash tests is based on human biomechanics, which are universal. You can’t really argue with that.

Fair enough. But given the limited budget of a person living in India or Latin America, they may be more willing to accept a riskier car design to save, say, $300.

Yes, we’ve been told that we’re terrible because we’re going to keep people on dangerous motorcycles longer because they can’t afford a car. But when you look at travel behavior in a country like India, there is no real evidence that this displacement is happening. People are using a motorcycle in a place like Delhi for its convenience, and they’re not going to get rid of it if they purchase a car. They will use the car as a family product to drive to other regions. Also, it’s not as though new cars are the only option in emerging markets. In the short term, someone who can’t afford a new car might get a secondhand one instead.

To what extent do crash test ratings drive purchases? Do people really look at them when deciding which vehicle to buy?

That’s an interesting question. When I was on the board of Euro NCAP around 25 years ago, we looked at the extent to which NCAP ratings affect the point of sale. We learned that the influence of the ratings was surprisingly low.

Does that mean the program isn’t useful?

Not at all, because NCAP is more about influencing internal car company conversations than individual consumer decisions.

Within every automaker, there are engineers who are told “you have to meet this” and financial people saying “you have to stay within this cost structure” and marketing types saying, “we’ve got to launch using these ads.”

If someone asks about the safety rating and the answer is “well, it might only get three stars out of five,” you create an internal dynamic where the bean counters say “OK, this really needs to be five stars.” That makes a huge difference

Let’s talk about the US. How is the country doing in vehicle safety compared to global peers?

It’s tragic. In the days of Ralph Nader and the Johnson administration, the US was the global leader in vehicle safety standards; Jimmy Carter’s NHTSA administrator developed the first NCAP program in the world. Then in the 1990s the EU gradually took over, and the US began to drop out of global discussions about the future of vehicle safety.

The Biden administration did move to revise NCAP and federal car regulations, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, to begin addressing pedestrian safety. But the big fear is that the Trump administration will delay implementation, which seems to already be happening.

What are your thoughts about the rising popularity of SUVs and pickups that keep getting bigger ?

Leaving aside the pedestrian safety problems, there is this whole issue of energy transfer from a larger car to a smaller one in a crash. I think the best way to handle car bloat is weight-based taxation, as in countries like France, which creates a disincentive for consumers to be running toward these giant vehicles.

A trendy vehicle technology among safety advocates is Intelligent Speed Assist. Using GPS and cameras, active ISA prevents drivers from exceeding the posted speed limit by more than a given amount, while passive ISA sounds a warning but doesn't block additional acceleration. New cars in the EU are now required to be equipped with passive ISA, typically audible warnings. To what extent do such chimes reduce speeding?

In Europe, I think passive ISA could be downright harmful.

Why?

If I’m being cynical, I think European car manufacturers encouraged passive ISA knowing it would be unpopular. We had a huge battle over it, and the auto industry shot down the idea of active ISA and replaced it with passive ISA

The current EU legislation will eventually be reviewed, and the industry might argue that acoustic warnings have been unpopular and haven’t reduced speeding, so we should just get rid of them. But from day one, we’ve been pushing for the EU to mandate active ISA, not passive, because it’s much more effective.

In the coming years, how optimistic are you that better vehicle regulations will reduce crash deaths around the world?

These days it sort of depends on which side of the bed I’ve gotten out of. The US is very central. The country has traditionally been a global leader in vehicle safety, but they’ve lost that status. Americans often talk about autonomous vehicles, but I think that’s a red herring. That technology is so far into the future that in terms of immediate impact it’s kind of meaningless.

The absence of the US in international vehicle standard discussions is a huge problem. When Americans are engaged, it has a positive effect on everybody.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-03/how-did-cars-around-the-world-get-safer-credit-the-crash-test

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

(www.bloomberg.com)

How much of this is just from Europe not having every suburban dad bro driving a lifted f250 to get a single bag of dirt from Home Depot. Or, soccer mom driving an expedition (f150 wagon) to drive their 1 kid to soccer practice.

Sounds like it's both.

But the reason I think this means alot in favour of regulations, is that in EU over the last 30 years, death rates have dropped in almost every single country. In Portugal it was 80%.

Europe didnt change car size in that periode, but they did get much better safety standards.

Here's the source: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/portugals-roads-have-become-much-safer-over-the-last-thirty-years

It also says other measures did take place in Portugal, but it's an universal change in Europe, safety being the key factor.

How did you get involved in car safety?

When I was very young, in the 1960s, I was a complete petrolhead. If you met me when I was 15 and asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I wanted to race.

The top driver of the age was Jim Clark, a Scot who won the Indy 500 as well as Formula 1. In those days, racing was spectacularly dangerous. Clark was killed in 1968 in a crash that was absolutely awful — no barrier, straight into trees, no seatbelt. So at a very early age, I had a rather brutal awareness of vehicle dynamics, risk and safety. It stuck with me

At that time — the 1990s — what was the status of European vehicle safety?

The US was ahead. Europe hadn’t upgraded its crash standards since the 1970s. The European car industry had adopted this classic strategy of deny, deflect and delay.

They’d claim new tests weren’t needed, or they’d come up with new tests that were utterly rubbish. To make a long story short, we defeated the car industry and got what we wanted, which was front and side crash tests introduced for the first time.

In fact, the late 1990s were a double whammy for the European car industry, because beyond those standards we also introduced Euro NCAP, which they bitterly opposed.

That’s the European New Car Assessment Program — Europe’s version of the crash ratings that rank the safety of individual vehicle models.

Right. I served on the board of Euro NCAP through the 2000s. Around 2009 we realized there are opportunities to do more safety work in emerging markets, and I ended up leading Global NCAP, which has launched and funded NCAP programs around the world.

In 2010 we created Latin NCAP, working initially with a road safety NGO in Uruguay called the Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation. Now there’s also ASEAN NCAP in Southeast Asia as well as programs in India and Africa, each of which has different standards. NCAP programs also exist in Australia, China, and Japan.

My view is that the more governments around the world can coalesce around a common framework of vehicle standards, the better it is for industry because they can capitalize on economies of scale. Right now, regulatory standards in emerging markets are playing catch-up as those countries absorb a huge expansion in vehicle fleets.

It’s important to get emerging markets to embrace common standards shared with high-income countries; otherwise we’ll get a two-tiered world of car safety.

That is what has been especially satisfying about the progress in India, where the car market has been totally transformed over the last decade, when crash ratings began. Cars there are now on a par with Europe or the US in terms of protection.

You were deeply involved in the establishment of India’s NCAP program. When you started developing it in the early 2010s, how many Indian cars flunked crash tests?

Almost all of them did.

At the time, the most popular model in India was a Maruti Suzuki Alto, a death trap with no airbags and a very unsafe structure. It would be illegal to sell it in the US, Europe or Japan. But when we launched Indian crash test ratings, people told us there was no market for safety features like airbags. Indian consumers are far too cost-conscious, the tests aren’t relevant to local market conditions, blah, blah, blah.

What happened when you unveiled Indian crash ratings?

The media coverage of models failing the tests was extraordinary; it was front-page news. At the time, there was a new Indian government that took the issue seriously. That summer, the rural affairs minister was killed in a car crash in Delhi. In the cabinet meetings, there was an empty chair where he would have sat. The next year, the government announced they would upgrade Indian vehicle safety standards.

Today, India’s bestselling car is the Tata Punch, which is a five-star car. You could sell it comfortably in any global market.

That’s an interesting example of crash test ratings — which are consumer information, not regulations — affecting vehicle laws. How often does that happen?

The more advanced safety features typically start off in the luxury and premium brands, without regulation.

For Volvo, Mercedes and so on, those features are part of their marketing.

But when you get to the mass market brands, where price competitiveness is much tougher, new technologies like electronic stability control can stall. At that point NCAPs can build momentum to require such features. That’s a very common cycle that we’ve seen around the world.

Ultimately, if you want safe features throughout the whole car market, you’ve got to regulate.

Why are there so many NCAP programs around the world, instead of just one global standard?

If you take Euro NCAP, which is the most advanced program, they’re looking at things like bicycle sensors that are state of the art. If you tried to do that immediately in a place like Latin America, you’re going too fast and too far.

What do you mean by that?

In emerging markets, cars that have such features aren’t available. The danger is that you make the five-star rating unreachable, and then you deny the manufacturers an incentive to even try. The solution is to upgrade standards periodically. Over time, I expect they will gradually converge as markets mature.

In the developing world, do critics argue that it’s wrong to require some safety features that make cars more expensive, because people may prefer affordability?

Yes, we hear that all the time. Our first response is that the science behind crash tests is based on human biomechanics, which are universal. You can’t really argue with that.

Fair enough. But given the limited budget of a person living in India or Latin America, they may be more willing to accept a riskier car design to save, say, $300.

Yes, we’ve been told that we’re terrible because we’re going to keep people on dangerous motorcycles longer because they can’t afford a car. But when you look at travel behavior in a country like India, there is no real evidence that this displacement is happening. People are using a motorcycle in a place like Delhi for its convenience, and they’re not going to get rid of it if they purchase a car. They will use the car as a family product to drive to other regions. Also, it’s not as though new cars are the only option in emerging markets. In the short term, someone who can’t afford a new car might get a secondhand one instead.

To what extent do crash test ratings drive purchases? Do people really look at them when deciding which vehicle to buy?

That’s an interesting question. When I was on the board of Euro NCAP around 25 years ago, we looked at the extent to which NCAP ratings affect the point of sale. We learned that the influence of the ratings was surprisingly low.

Does that mean the program isn’t useful?

Not at all, because NCAP is more about influencing internal car company conversations than individual consumer decisions.

Within every automaker, there are engineers who are told “you have to meet this” and financial people saying “you have to stay within this cost structure” and marketing types saying, “we’ve got to launch using these ads.”

If someone asks about the safety rating and the answer is “well, it might only get three stars out of five,” you create an internal dynamic where the bean counters say “OK, this really needs to be five stars.” That makes a huge difference

Let’s talk about the US. How is the country doing in vehicle safety compared to global peers?

It’s tragic. In the days of Ralph Nader and the Johnson administration, the US was the global leader in vehicle safety standards; Jimmy Carter’s NHTSA administrator developed the first NCAP program in the world. Then in the 1990s the EU gradually took over, and the US began to drop out of global discussions about the future of vehicle safety.

The Biden administration did move to revise NCAP and federal car regulations, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, to begin addressing pedestrian safety. But the big fear is that the Trump administration will delay implementation, which seems to already be happening.

What are your thoughts about the rising popularity of SUVs and pickups that keep getting bigger ?

Leaving aside the pedestrian safety problems, there is this whole issue of energy transfer from a larger car to a smaller one in a crash. I think the best way to handle car bloat is weight-based taxation, as in countries like France, which creates a disincentive for consumers to be running toward these giant vehicles.

A trendy vehicle technology among safety advocates is Intelligent Speed Assist. Using GPS and cameras, active ISA prevents drivers from exceeding the posted speed limit by more than a given amount, while passive ISA sounds a warning but doesn't block additional acceleration. New cars in the EU are now required to be equipped with passive ISA, typically audible warnings. To what extent do such chimes reduce speeding?

In Europe, I think passive ISA could be downright harmful.

Why?

If I’m being cynical, I think European car manufacturers encouraged passive ISA knowing it would be unpopular. We had a huge battle over it, and the auto industry shot down the idea of active ISA and replaced it with passive ISA

The current EU legislation will eventually be reviewed, and the industry might argue that acoustic warnings have been unpopular and haven’t reduced speeding, so we should just get rid of them. But from day one, we’ve been pushing for the EU to mandate active ISA, not passive, because it’s much more effective.

In the coming years, how optimistic are you that better vehicle regulations will reduce crash deaths around the world?

These days it sort of depends on which side of the bed I’ve gotten out of. The US is very central. The country has traditionally been a global leader in vehicle safety, but they’ve lost that status. Americans often talk about autonomous vehicles, but I think that’s a red herring. That technology is so far into the future that in terms of immediate impact it’s kind of meaningless.

The absence of the US in international vehicle standard discussions is a huge problem. When Americans are engaged, it has a positive effect on everybody.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-03/how-did-cars-around-the-world-get-safer-credit-the-crash-test

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

(www.bloomberg.com)

How did you get involved in car safety?

When I was very young, in the 1960s, I was a complete petrolhead. If you met me when I was 15 and asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I wanted to race.

The top driver of the age was Jim Clark, a Scot who won the Indy 500 as well as Formula 1. In those days, racing was spectacularly dangerous. Clark was killed in 1968 in a crash that was absolutely awful — no barrier, straight into trees, no seatbelt. So at a very early age, I had a rather brutal awareness of vehicle dynamics, risk and safety. It stuck with me

At that time — the 1990s — what was the status of European vehicle safety?

The US was ahead. Europe hadn’t upgraded its crash standards since the 1970s. The European car industry had adopted this classic strategy of deny, deflect and delay.

They’d claim new tests weren’t needed, or they’d come up with new tests that were utterly rubbish. To make a long story short, we defeated the car industry and got what we wanted, which was front and side crash tests introduced for the first time.

In fact, the late 1990s were a double whammy for the European car industry, because beyond those standards we also introduced Euro NCAP, which they bitterly opposed.

That’s the European New Car Assessment Program — Europe’s version of the crash ratings that rank the safety of individual vehicle models.

Right. I served on the board of Euro NCAP through the 2000s. Around 2009 we realized there are opportunities to do more safety work in emerging markets, and I ended up leading Global NCAP, which has launched and funded NCAP programs around the world.

In 2010 we created Latin NCAP, working initially with a road safety NGO in Uruguay called the Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation. Now there’s also ASEAN NCAP in Southeast Asia as well as programs in India and Africa, each of which has different standards. NCAP programs also exist in Australia, China, and Japan.

My view is that the more governments around the world can coalesce around a common framework of vehicle standards, the better it is for industry because they can capitalize on economies of scale. Right now, regulatory standards in emerging markets are playing catch-up as those countries absorb a huge expansion in vehicle fleets.

It’s important to get emerging markets to embrace common standards shared with high-income countries; otherwise we’ll get a two-tiered world of car safety.

That is what has been especially satisfying about the progress in India, where the car market has been totally transformed over the last decade, when crash ratings began. Cars there are now on a par with Europe or the US in terms of protection.

You were deeply involved in the establishment of India’s NCAP program. When you started developing it in the early 2010s, how many Indian cars flunked crash tests?

Almost all of them did.

At the time, the most popular model in India was a Maruti Suzuki Alto, a death trap with no airbags and a very unsafe structure. It would be illegal to sell it in the US, Europe or Japan. But when we launched Indian crash test ratings, people told us there was no market for safety features like airbags. Indian consumers are far too cost-conscious, the tests aren’t relevant to local market conditions, blah, blah, blah.

What happened when you unveiled Indian crash ratings?

The media coverage of models failing the tests was extraordinary; it was front-page news. At the time, there was a new Indian government that took the issue seriously. That summer, the rural affairs minister was killed in a car crash in Delhi. In the cabinet meetings, there was an empty chair where he would have sat. The next year, the government announced they would upgrade Indian vehicle safety standards.

Today, India’s bestselling car is the Tata Punch, which is a five-star car. You could sell it comfortably in any global market.

That’s an interesting example of crash test ratings — which are consumer information, not regulations — affecting vehicle laws. How often does that happen?

The more advanced safety features typically start off in the luxury and premium brands, without regulation.

For Volvo, Mercedes and so on, those features are part of their marketing.

But when you get to the mass market brands, where price competitiveness is much tougher, new technologies like electronic stability control can stall. At that point NCAPs can build momentum to require such features. That’s a very common cycle that we’ve seen around the world.

Ultimately, if you want safe features throughout the whole car market, you’ve got to regulate.

Why are there so many NCAP programs around the world, instead of just one global standard?

If you take Euro NCAP, which is the most advanced program, they’re looking at things like bicycle sensors that are state of the art. If you tried to do that immediately in a place like Latin America, you’re going too fast and too far.

What do you mean by that?

In emerging markets, cars that have such features aren’t available. The danger is that you make the five-star rating unreachable, and then you deny the manufacturers an incentive to even try. The solution is to upgrade standards periodically. Over time, I expect they will gradually converge as markets mature.

In the developing world, do critics argue that it’s wrong to require some safety features that make cars more expensive, because people may prefer affordability?

Yes, we hear that all the time. Our first response is that the science behind crash tests is based on human biomechanics, which are universal. You can’t really argue with that.

Fair enough. But given the limited budget of a person living in India or Latin America, they may be more willing to accept a riskier car design to save, say, $300.

Yes, we’ve been told that we’re terrible because we’re going to keep people on dangerous motorcycles longer because they can’t afford a car. But when you look at travel behavior in a country like India, there is no real evidence that this displacement is happening. People are using a motorcycle in a place like Delhi for its convenience, and they’re not going to get rid of it if they purchase a car. They will use the car as a family product to drive to other regions. Also, it’s not as though new cars are the only option in emerging markets. In the short term, someone who can’t afford a new car might get a secondhand one instead.

To what extent do crash test ratings drive purchases? Do people really look at them when deciding which vehicle to buy?

That’s an interesting question. When I was on the board of Euro NCAP around 25 years ago, we looked at the extent to which NCAP ratings affect the point of sale. We learned that the influence of the ratings was surprisingly low.

Does that mean the program isn’t useful?

Not at all, because NCAP is more about influencing internal car company conversations than individual consumer decisions.

Within every automaker, there are engineers who are told “you have to meet this” and financial people saying “you have to stay within this cost structure” and marketing types saying, “we’ve got to launch using these ads.”

If someone asks about the safety rating and the answer is “well, it might only get three stars out of five,” you create an internal dynamic where the bean counters say “OK, this really needs to be five stars.” That makes a huge difference

Let’s talk about the US. How is the country doing in vehicle safety compared to global peers?

It’s tragic. In the days of Ralph Nader and the Johnson administration, the US was the global leader in vehicle safety standards; Jimmy Carter’s NHTSA administrator developed the first NCAP program in the world. Then in the 1990s the EU gradually took over, and the US began to drop out of global discussions about the future of vehicle safety.

The Biden administration did move to revise NCAP and federal car regulations, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, to begin addressing pedestrian safety. But the big fear is that the Trump administration will delay implementation, which seems to already be happening.

What are your thoughts about the rising popularity of SUVs and pickups that keep getting bigger ?

Leaving aside the pedestrian safety problems, there is this whole issue of energy transfer from a larger car to a smaller one in a crash. I think the best way to handle car bloat is weight-based taxation, as in countries like France, which creates a disincentive for consumers to be running toward these giant vehicles.

A trendy vehicle technology among safety advocates is Intelligent Speed Assist. Using GPS and cameras, active ISA prevents drivers from exceeding the posted speed limit by more than a given amount, while passive ISA sounds a warning but doesn't block additional acceleration. New cars in the EU are now required to be equipped with passive ISA, typically audible warnings. To what extent do such chimes reduce speeding?

In Europe, I think passive ISA could be downright harmful.

Why?

If I’m being cynical, I think European car manufacturers encouraged passive ISA knowing it would be unpopular. We had a huge battle over it, and the auto industry shot down the idea of active ISA and replaced it with passive ISA

The current EU legislation will eventually be reviewed, and the industry might argue that acoustic warnings have been unpopular and haven’t reduced speeding, so we should just get rid of them. But from day one, we’ve been pushing for the EU to mandate active ISA, not passive, because it’s much more effective.

In the coming years, how optimistic are you that better vehicle regulations will reduce crash deaths around the world?

These days it sort of depends on which side of the bed I’ve gotten out of. The US is very central. The country has traditionally been a global leader in vehicle safety, but they’ve lost that status. Americans often talk about autonomous vehicles, but I think that’s a red herring. That technology is so far into the future that in terms of immediate impact it’s kind of meaningless.

The absence of the US in international vehicle standard discussions is a huge problem. When Americans are engaged, it has a positive effect on everybody.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-03/how-did-cars-around-the-world-get-safer-credit-the-crash-test

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

(www.bloomberg.com)

How much of this is just from Europe not having every suburban dad bro driving a lifted f250 to get a single bag of dirt from Home Depot. Or, soccer mom driving an expedition (f150 wagon) to drive their 1 kid to soccer practice.

How did you get involved in car safety?

When I was very young, in the 1960s, I was a complete petrolhead. If you met me when I was 15 and asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I wanted to race.

The top driver of the age was Jim Clark, a Scot who won the Indy 500 as well as Formula 1. In those days, racing was spectacularly dangerous. Clark was killed in 1968 in a crash that was absolutely awful — no barrier, straight into trees, no seatbelt. So at a very early age, I had a rather brutal awareness of vehicle dynamics, risk and safety. It stuck with me

At that time — the 1990s — what was the status of European vehicle safety?

The US was ahead. Europe hadn’t upgraded its crash standards since the 1970s. The European car industry had adopted this classic strategy of deny, deflect and delay.

They’d claim new tests weren’t needed, or they’d come up with new tests that were utterly rubbish. To make a long story short, we defeated the car industry and got what we wanted, which was front and side crash tests introduced for the first time.

In fact, the late 1990s were a double whammy for the European car industry, because beyond those standards we also introduced Euro NCAP, which they bitterly opposed.

That’s the European New Car Assessment Program — Europe’s version of the crash ratings that rank the safety of individual vehicle models.

Right. I served on the board of Euro NCAP through the 2000s. Around 2009 we realized there are opportunities to do more safety work in emerging markets, and I ended up leading Global NCAP, which has launched and funded NCAP programs around the world.

In 2010 we created Latin NCAP, working initially with a road safety NGO in Uruguay called the Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation. Now there’s also ASEAN NCAP in Southeast Asia as well as programs in India and Africa, each of which has different standards. NCAP programs also exist in Australia, China, and Japan.

My view is that the more governments around the world can coalesce around a common framework of vehicle standards, the better it is for industry because they can capitalize on economies of scale. Right now, regulatory standards in emerging markets are playing catch-up as those countries absorb a huge expansion in vehicle fleets.

It’s important to get emerging markets to embrace common standards shared with high-income countries; otherwise we’ll get a two-tiered world of car safety.

That is what has been especially satisfying about the progress in India, where the car market has been totally transformed over the last decade, when crash ratings began. Cars there are now on a par with Europe or the US in terms of protection.

You were deeply involved in the establishment of India’s NCAP program. When you started developing it in the early 2010s, how many Indian cars flunked crash tests?

Almost all of them did.

At the time, the most popular model in India was a Maruti Suzuki Alto, a death trap with no airbags and a very unsafe structure. It would be illegal to sell it in the US, Europe or Japan. But when we launched Indian crash test ratings, people told us there was no market for safety features like airbags. Indian consumers are far too cost-conscious, the tests aren’t relevant to local market conditions, blah, blah, blah.

What happened when you unveiled Indian crash ratings?

The media coverage of models failing the tests was extraordinary; it was front-page news. At the time, there was a new Indian government that took the issue seriously. That summer, the rural affairs minister was killed in a car crash in Delhi. In the cabinet meetings, there was an empty chair where he would have sat. The next year, the government announced they would upgrade Indian vehicle safety standards.

Today, India’s bestselling car is the Tata Punch, which is a five-star car. You could sell it comfortably in any global market.

That’s an interesting example of crash test ratings — which are consumer information, not regulations — affecting vehicle laws. How often does that happen?

The more advanced safety features typically start off in the luxury and premium brands, without regulation.

For Volvo, Mercedes and so on, those features are part of their marketing.

But when you get to the mass market brands, where price competitiveness is much tougher, new technologies like electronic stability control can stall. At that point NCAPs can build momentum to require such features. That’s a very common cycle that we’ve seen around the world.

Ultimately, if you want safe features throughout the whole car market, you’ve got to regulate.

Why are there so many NCAP programs around the world, instead of just one global standard?

If you take Euro NCAP, which is the most advanced program, they’re looking at things like bicycle sensors that are state of the art. If you tried to do that immediately in a place like Latin America, you’re going too fast and too far.

What do you mean by that?

In emerging markets, cars that have such features aren’t available. The danger is that you make the five-star rating unreachable, and then you deny the manufacturers an incentive to even try. The solution is to upgrade standards periodically. Over time, I expect they will gradually converge as markets mature.

In the developing world, do critics argue that it’s wrong to require some safety features that make cars more expensive, because people may prefer affordability?

Yes, we hear that all the time. Our first response is that the science behind crash tests is based on human biomechanics, which are universal. You can’t really argue with that.

Fair enough. But given the limited budget of a person living in India or Latin America, they may be more willing to accept a riskier car design to save, say, $300.

Yes, we’ve been told that we’re terrible because we’re going to keep people on dangerous motorcycles longer because they can’t afford a car. But when you look at travel behavior in a country like India, there is no real evidence that this displacement is happening. People are using a motorcycle in a place like Delhi for its convenience, and they’re not going to get rid of it if they purchase a car. They will use the car as a family product to drive to other regions. Also, it’s not as though new cars are the only option in emerging markets. In the short term, someone who can’t afford a new car might get a secondhand one instead.

To what extent do crash test ratings drive purchases? Do people really look at them when deciding which vehicle to buy?

That’s an interesting question. When I was on the board of Euro NCAP around 25 years ago, we looked at the extent to which NCAP ratings affect the point of sale. We learned that the influence of the ratings was surprisingly low.

Does that mean the program isn’t useful?

Not at all, because NCAP is more about influencing internal car company conversations than individual consumer decisions.

Within every automaker, there are engineers who are told “you have to meet this” and financial people saying “you have to stay within this cost structure” and marketing types saying, “we’ve got to launch using these ads.”

If someone asks about the safety rating and the answer is “well, it might only get three stars out of five,” you create an internal dynamic where the bean counters say “OK, this really needs to be five stars.” That makes a huge difference

Let’s talk about the US. How is the country doing in vehicle safety compared to global peers?

It’s tragic. In the days of Ralph Nader and the Johnson administration, the US was the global leader in vehicle safety standards; Jimmy Carter’s NHTSA administrator developed the first NCAP program in the world. Then in the 1990s the EU gradually took over, and the US began to drop out of global discussions about the future of vehicle safety.

The Biden administration did move to revise NCAP and federal car regulations, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, to begin addressing pedestrian safety. But the big fear is that the Trump administration will delay implementation, which seems to already be happening.

What are your thoughts about the rising popularity of SUVs and pickups that keep getting bigger ?

Leaving aside the pedestrian safety problems, there is this whole issue of energy transfer from a larger car to a smaller one in a crash. I think the best way to handle car bloat is weight-based taxation, as in countries like France, which creates a disincentive for consumers to be running toward these giant vehicles.

A trendy vehicle technology among safety advocates is Intelligent Speed Assist. Using GPS and cameras, active ISA prevents drivers from exceeding the posted speed limit by more than a given amount, while passive ISA sounds a warning but doesn't block additional acceleration. New cars in the EU are now required to be equipped with passive ISA, typically audible warnings. To what extent do such chimes reduce speeding?

In Europe, I think passive ISA could be downright harmful.

Why?

If I’m being cynical, I think European car manufacturers encouraged passive ISA knowing it would be unpopular. We had a huge battle over it, and the auto industry shot down the idea of active ISA and replaced it with passive ISA

The current EU legislation will eventually be reviewed, and the industry might argue that acoustic warnings have been unpopular and haven’t reduced speeding, so we should just get rid of them. But from day one, we’ve been pushing for the EU to mandate active ISA, not passive, because it’s much more effective.

In the coming years, how optimistic are you that better vehicle regulations will reduce crash deaths around the world?

These days it sort of depends on which side of the bed I’ve gotten out of. The US is very central. The country has traditionally been a global leader in vehicle safety, but they’ve lost that status. Americans often talk about autonomous vehicles, but I think that’s a red herring. That technology is so far into the future that in terms of immediate impact it’s kind of meaningless.

The absence of the US in international vehicle standard discussions is a huge problem. When Americans are engaged, it has a positive effect on everybody.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-03/how-did-cars-around-the-world-get-safer-credit-the-crash-test

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

(www.bloomberg.com)

I have a new car and the pop ups arw infuriating. New Terms and Conditions, new update available and my least favourite the unskippable randomly timed confirmation request that I will follow the rules of the road...this one makes me angry and interupts my driving.

How did you get involved in car safety?

When I was very young, in the 1960s, I was a complete petrolhead. If you met me when I was 15 and asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I wanted to race.

The top driver of the age was Jim Clark, a Scot who won the Indy 500 as well as Formula 1. In those days, racing was spectacularly dangerous. Clark was killed in 1968 in a crash that was absolutely awful — no barrier, straight into trees, no seatbelt. So at a very early age, I had a rather brutal awareness of vehicle dynamics, risk and safety. It stuck with me

At that time — the 1990s — what was the status of European vehicle safety?

The US was ahead. Europe hadn’t upgraded its crash standards since the 1970s. The European car industry had adopted this classic strategy of deny, deflect and delay.

They’d claim new tests weren’t needed, or they’d come up with new tests that were utterly rubbish. To make a long story short, we defeated the car industry and got what we wanted, which was front and side crash tests introduced for the first time.

In fact, the late 1990s were a double whammy for the European car industry, because beyond those standards we also introduced Euro NCAP, which they bitterly opposed.

That’s the European New Car Assessment Program — Europe’s version of the crash ratings that rank the safety of individual vehicle models.

Right. I served on the board of Euro NCAP through the 2000s. Around 2009 we realized there are opportunities to do more safety work in emerging markets, and I ended up leading Global NCAP, which has launched and funded NCAP programs around the world.

In 2010 we created Latin NCAP, working initially with a road safety NGO in Uruguay called the Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation. Now there’s also ASEAN NCAP in Southeast Asia as well as programs in India and Africa, each of which has different standards. NCAP programs also exist in Australia, China, and Japan.

My view is that the more governments around the world can coalesce around a common framework of vehicle standards, the better it is for industry because they can capitalize on economies of scale. Right now, regulatory standards in emerging markets are playing catch-up as those countries absorb a huge expansion in vehicle fleets.

It’s important to get emerging markets to embrace common standards shared with high-income countries; otherwise we’ll get a two-tiered world of car safety.

That is what has been especially satisfying about the progress in India, where the car market has been totally transformed over the last decade, when crash ratings began. Cars there are now on a par with Europe or the US in terms of protection.

You were deeply involved in the establishment of India’s NCAP program. When you started developing it in the early 2010s, how many Indian cars flunked crash tests?

Almost all of them did.

At the time, the most popular model in India was a Maruti Suzuki Alto, a death trap with no airbags and a very unsafe structure. It would be illegal to sell it in the US, Europe or Japan. But when we launched Indian crash test ratings, people told us there was no market for safety features like airbags. Indian consumers are far too cost-conscious, the tests aren’t relevant to local market conditions, blah, blah, blah.

What happened when you unveiled Indian crash ratings?

The media coverage of models failing the tests was extraordinary; it was front-page news. At the time, there was a new Indian government that took the issue seriously. That summer, the rural affairs minister was killed in a car crash in Delhi. In the cabinet meetings, there was an empty chair where he would have sat. The next year, the government announced they would upgrade Indian vehicle safety standards.

Today, India’s bestselling car is the Tata Punch, which is a five-star car. You could sell it comfortably in any global market.

That’s an interesting example of crash test ratings — which are consumer information, not regulations — affecting vehicle laws. How often does that happen?

The more advanced safety features typically start off in the luxury and premium brands, without regulation.

For Volvo, Mercedes and so on, those features are part of their marketing.

But when you get to the mass market brands, where price competitiveness is much tougher, new technologies like electronic stability control can stall. At that point NCAPs can build momentum to require such features. That’s a very common cycle that we’ve seen around the world.

Ultimately, if you want safe features throughout the whole car market, you’ve got to regulate.

Why are there so many NCAP programs around the world, instead of just one global standard?

If you take Euro NCAP, which is the most advanced program, they’re looking at things like bicycle sensors that are state of the art. If you tried to do that immediately in a place like Latin America, you’re going too fast and too far.

What do you mean by that?

In emerging markets, cars that have such features aren’t available. The danger is that you make the five-star rating unreachable, and then you deny the manufacturers an incentive to even try. The solution is to upgrade standards periodically. Over time, I expect they will gradually converge as markets mature.

In the developing world, do critics argue that it’s wrong to require some safety features that make cars more expensive, because people may prefer affordability?

Yes, we hear that all the time. Our first response is that the science behind crash tests is based on human biomechanics, which are universal. You can’t really argue with that.

Fair enough. But given the limited budget of a person living in India or Latin America, they may be more willing to accept a riskier car design to save, say, $300.

Yes, we’ve been told that we’re terrible because we’re going to keep people on dangerous motorcycles longer because they can’t afford a car. But when you look at travel behavior in a country like India, there is no real evidence that this displacement is happening. People are using a motorcycle in a place like Delhi for its convenience, and they’re not going to get rid of it if they purchase a car. They will use the car as a family product to drive to other regions. Also, it’s not as though new cars are the only option in emerging markets. In the short term, someone who can’t afford a new car might get a secondhand one instead.

To what extent do crash test ratings drive purchases? Do people really look at them when deciding which vehicle to buy?

That’s an interesting question. When I was on the board of Euro NCAP around 25 years ago, we looked at the extent to which NCAP ratings affect the point of sale. We learned that the influence of the ratings was surprisingly low.

Does that mean the program isn’t useful?

Not at all, because NCAP is more about influencing internal car company conversations than individual consumer decisions.

Within every automaker, there are engineers who are told “you have to meet this” and financial people saying “you have to stay within this cost structure” and marketing types saying, “we’ve got to launch using these ads.”

If someone asks about the safety rating and the answer is “well, it might only get three stars out of five,” you create an internal dynamic where the bean counters say “OK, this really needs to be five stars.” That makes a huge difference

Let’s talk about the US. How is the country doing in vehicle safety compared to global peers?

It’s tragic. In the days of Ralph Nader and the Johnson administration, the US was the global leader in vehicle safety standards; Jimmy Carter’s NHTSA administrator developed the first NCAP program in the world. Then in the 1990s the EU gradually took over, and the US began to drop out of global discussions about the future of vehicle safety.

The Biden administration did move to revise NCAP and federal car regulations, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, to begin addressing pedestrian safety. But the big fear is that the Trump administration will delay implementation, which seems to already be happening.

What are your thoughts about the rising popularity of SUVs and pickups that keep getting bigger ?

Leaving aside the pedestrian safety problems, there is this whole issue of energy transfer from a larger car to a smaller one in a crash. I think the best way to handle car bloat is weight-based taxation, as in countries like France, which creates a disincentive for consumers to be running toward these giant vehicles.

A trendy vehicle technology among safety advocates is Intelligent Speed Assist. Using GPS and cameras, active ISA prevents drivers from exceeding the posted speed limit by more than a given amount, while passive ISA sounds a warning but doesn't block additional acceleration. New cars in the EU are now required to be equipped with passive ISA, typically audible warnings. To what extent do such chimes reduce speeding?

In Europe, I think passive ISA could be downright harmful.

Why?

If I’m being cynical, I think European car manufacturers encouraged passive ISA knowing it would be unpopular. We had a huge battle over it, and the auto industry shot down the idea of active ISA and replaced it with passive ISA

The current EU legislation will eventually be reviewed, and the industry might argue that acoustic warnings have been unpopular and haven’t reduced speeding, so we should just get rid of them. But from day one, we’ve been pushing for the EU to mandate active ISA, not passive, because it’s much more effective.

In the coming years, how optimistic are you that better vehicle regulations will reduce crash deaths around the world?

These days it sort of depends on which side of the bed I’ve gotten out of. The US is very central. The country has traditionally been a global leader in vehicle safety, but they’ve lost that status. Americans often talk about autonomous vehicles, but I think that’s a red herring. That technology is so far into the future that in terms of immediate impact it’s kind of meaningless.

The absence of the US in international vehicle standard discussions is a huge problem. When Americans are engaged, it has a positive effect on everybody.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-03/how-did-cars-around-the-world-get-safer-credit-the-crash-test

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

(www.bloomberg.com)