Lexus RZ Aces The NEW ANCAP Vehicle Safety Criteria - 5 Stars

The BEV Lexus RZ recently received the first safety rating for a vehicle tested against the new 2023 criteria from Australia and New Zealand's independent vehicle safety authority, ANCAP, and was awarded a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating, demonstrating the potential of modern safety features and technologies.

The Lexus RZ received an 87% for Adult Occupant Protection, an 89% for Child Occupant Protection, an 84% for Vulnerable Road User Protection, and an 84% for Safety Assist.

Vehicles only needed to fulfil score standards of 80% for Adult Occupant Protection, 80% for Child Occupant Protection, and 70% for Safety Assist to earn a five-star rating under former rules. However, the revised 2023-2025 standards broaden the scope of safety assessments and test scenarios while adjusting the distribution of available points. Crash protection, on the other hand, remains the core of ANCAP safety ratings.

Key changes in the criteria that manufacturers would need to meet are;

• Vehicle Structure: Greater emphasis on vehicle-to-vehicle crash compatibility with an increased penalty of 8 points.
• Restraint Design: Improved performance of onboard restraint systems for front and rear seating positions, with reduced tolerance for chest injuries in the full-width frontal test.
• Motorcyclist Detection: Assessment of a vehicle's ability to detect and avoid collisions with motorcycles using autonomous emergency braking (AEB), blind spot monitoring (BSM), and lane support (LSS) functionality.
• Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB): Evaluation of AEB systems in head-on and intersection crossing scenarios.
• Cyclist Protection: Assessment of anti-dooring functionality, improved vehicle design to reduce cyclist head injury, and additional AEB scenarios.
• Child Occupant & Pedestrian Protection: Evaluation of in-cabin systems that detect and notify the driver of a child inadvertently left inside a vehicle, and AEB systems that detect and react to child pedestrians when reversing.
• Rescue & Extrication: Assessment of vehicle submergence egress capability.
• Driver Monitoring Systems: Evaluation of direct driver monitoring functionality that monitors eye movements for distraction, fatigue, and unresponsiveness.

Furthermore, based on the new assessment, the five-star threshold for Vulnerable Road User Protection also increased to 70% from the previous requirement of 60%. Threshold increases for all other star rating levels within the Vulnerable Road User Protection category were also introduced.

Based on all these new criterias, the Lexus RZ met the cyclist anti-dooring requirements, alerting occupants to approaching cyclists when exiting both front and rear doors and preventing door opening if necessary plus the Lexus RZ also satisfied the vehicle submergence requirements for door and window opening.

Furthermore, the RZ demonstrated excellent performance in new lane support and autonomous emergency braking scenarios, including those involving stationary and braking motorcycles and intersection turning scenarios with oncoming motorcycles.

Could we be looking at a global revamp of all safety testing standards to adapt to these new criteria, and how would all other makes and models fare if subjected to this? The Lexus RZ which is the first all electric offering from the brand is already open for register of interest in Thailand and we could surely expect to see it in Malaysia by late 2023 or early 2024.