A woman emailed the other day, asking for help to sue Toyota over the migraine headaches she believed were being created by all the ‘bings and bongs’ from the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in her new car.

Around the same time, there was a survey which said more than 20 per cent of Australian drivers turn off at least one ADAS system whenever they go driving.

Then came the Kia Tasman, which was touted as a 5-Star safety success despite the rating only applying to some, not nearly all, of the new South Korean utes.

Now I have read comments which say there is no need for tyre-pressure monitors in new cars, even though they are compulsory in Europe and the USA… and despite Australia going through
a pothole pandemic.

These various strings tighten in Canberra, at the office of the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP).

ANCAP has become the self-appointed judge-and-jury on all things road safety in Australia, creating a binary landscape where its 5-Star test score is acceptable and anything else is not. It’s the same with any response to its ratings,or questions, where positive is good and negative is not.

I have been an ANCAP booster since day one, which was way back in 2001 when Renault trumpeted the world’s first 5-Star NCAP rating for its then-new Laguna model in Sydney. Subaru was quick to add its support to ANCAP as an unofficial agreement between carmakers to ignore the test results – at best – came unglued.

The original chairman of ANCAP, Lauchlan McIntosh, was a calm and sensible leader who chipped away to create a positive push for new-car safety at a time when it only rated around #6 in most people’s list of key considerations for a new-car purchase.

During a brief period in public relations, with Hyundai, I experienced the malaise first-hand. The Hyundai Excel of the time only came with a single, driver’s-side airbag and the only way to get people to pay extra for a passenger airbag was to bundle it with an option pack that included a CD player.

Toyota Australia’s firebrand marketing chief, Bob Miller, was even more blunt. “If the car dies, the passenger dies too,” he once told a press gathering, in a quote that was – thankfully for him and his employment – ignored by the assembled media as just another off-the-cuff gag.

But, more recently, there have been lots of questions and doubts around car safety and the ANCAP world.

“They have lost the plot,” a former ANCAP insider texted me recently.

“I have no idea what it is doing with its time and money,” said another.

What’s gone wrong? Why did ANCAP see the need earlier this year for a costly television blitz with its ‘Choose Safety’ advertising campaign?

It is hugely well funded and most of the heavy lifting on laboratory crash testing is actually done by EuroNCAP, not the crew in Canberra. Is it time to ask some serious questions about ANCAP, or
perhaps provide a kick in the pants?

A couple of car companies have sniffed around the target, but then stayed quiet because they cannot afford to be labelled as ‘anti safety’. They also see no effective response to the emotional blackmail around buying something without 5 Stars.

There is plenty more to consider, including educating people – particularly parents of first-car buyers – on the difference between the various ANCAP testing programs. What was a 5-Star car in 2015 is definitely not a 5-Star performer in 2025, an important distinction for
second-hand shopping.

More directly and recently, ANCAP was happy to announce the Kia Tasman as having the same 5-Star safety rating as the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux, even though their test scores came from 2022 and 2019, not the updated standard for 2025.

Do parents also understand that 5-Star safety is now taking its tentacles well beyond occupant safety into things like back-seat child reminders and protection of pedestrians who have blundered onto the road while watching their smartphone?

Do they understand that the cost of ADAS systems, now essential for a 5-Star score, has helped to kill baby cars with sub-$20,000 pricetags because it costs around $5000 just to install the electronic safety net?

As the father of a 16-year-old learner driver I’m getting a fresh education on road safety and the value of ANCAP testing.

The worst news of all is that, even in a 5-Star car world, we’re still putting 1-Star drivers on the road every day.

This article originally appeared in the October 2025 issue of Wheels. Subscribe here and gain access to 12 issues for $109 plus online access to every Wheels issue since 1953.