NHTSA Revised 5-Star Rating System Delayed to 2011

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, announced that its new 5-star safety standards will be postponed for one more year, in order to allow carmakers adjust their models and prepare them for the revised rating system.

“NHTA has decided to postpone implementation of the Department's new 5-star Government safety rating program for one year to begin with Model Year 2011. This delay will give manufacturers another year to prepare for what are the most significant changes since the rating program began in 1979 and provide customers with an additional year to become familiar with the new rating system,” NHTSA explained in a public statement.

Obviously, this can only be good news for auto manufacturers, as the global economic recession damaged their sales and delayed their efforts to improve vehicle safety.

"Additional lead time will certainly help us make an orderly transition," Wade Newton, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, was quoted as saying by Azstarnet.

NHTSA's new crash tests mainly consists of using smaller dummies in simulating accidents, the aforementioned source added, in order to analyze the results of the impact over children and women. Moreover, every single test will be added up to the others ones in order to create a single safety score for each vehicle.

"The delay in one score is just less information in an easy-to-understand format for the public," Joan Claybrook, former NHTSA administrator, was quoted as saying by Azstarnet.

A report published by NHTSA in July unveiled that 98 percent of the models tested in 2007 achieved at least four star ratings, a fact that did nothing more than to attract criticism and to raise questions regarding the crash-rating program.