8 of Australia's worst cars for safety

6 December, 2024 By: Bruce Newton

If you're in the market for a new car, here are eight to steer clear of if you care about staying safe in a crash.

The language used in the technical reports published by Australia's new car safety testing agency, ANCAP, can be pretty dry.

They don't convey the screeching tyres, the crumpling metal, the fear, the violence, the injury and even more tragically, the deaths, that are so often a part of serious road crashes.

To truly understand what ANCAP is trying to tell us about the safety of the vehicles it tests it’s necessary to go beyond the jargon. And that’s what we’re attempting to do here, by breaking down the results of six vehicles on-sale in Australia today that have posted the poorest ANCAP test results.

MG5 – zero stars

The MG5 is an example of a vehicle built down to a price by stripping out safety gear that would contribute positively to its ANCAP score.

While it included autonomous emergency braking, it misses out on lane keeping or centring, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert, adaptive cruise control and a centre airbag.

There are also no seatbelt pre-tensioners or load limiters for seatbelts in the cheapest Vibe model.

Pretensioners take up the slack in the seatbelt in an accident while load limiters release the tension to avoid chest injuries.

But ANCAP crash testing also exposed a series of serious structural issues with the MG5 that could cause serious injury. It failed to score any points at all in three of five crash tests.

The driver is in danger of potentially life-threatening chest and lower leg injuries in a frontal off-set test. This simulates two cars hitting driver’s side to driver’s side at 50km/h as if one of them has veered out of its lane into oncoming traffic.

In the full width impact test – a head-on accident – a rear passenger was in danger of life-threatening chest, pelvis and leg injury. That was in part because of submarining under the lap section of the seatbelt.

Loading on the head and neck of children was also found to be higher than in most modern vehicles in both front and side impacts.

ANCAP, in its dry tone assessed this as “a lack of design effort” by MG. That’s pretty damning.

MG has promised safety upgrades including structural improvements will soon arrive for the MG5.

Mahindra Scorpio – zero stars

The Indian-manufactured Mahindra Scorpio is a diesel-powered 4x4 wagon that offers a cheaper alternative to segment leaders such as the Toyota Prado, Isuzu MU-X and Ford Everest.

Some of that budget pricing can be sheeted home to the omission of any advanced driver assist systems.

That means no autonomous emergency braking, no lane keeping and no blind spot monitoring, to name just a few.

That results in zero points in the Safety Assist segment of the test and a guaranteed zero stars for the overall result.

What that means to you when driving is e no assistance from smart autonomous safety features in an emergency situations. The Scorpio won’t issue a warning, won’t brake itself, won’t stop you from driving into a vehicle in an adjacent lane on the freeway.

But the Scorpio also proves unimpressive when subjected to the various crash tests conducted under the ANCAP process. It failed to score any points in two of five impact tests.

A high risk of serious injury was found for the head, neck and chest of the rear female passenger in the full width frontal test. Excessive force exerted by the seatbelt was a contributor here.

The front seats also offered little protection from a whiplash injury in a rear-end impact.

Pedestrians faced the potential of life-threatening head, pelvis, femur and lower leg injuries if struck by the Scorpio.

The front structure was also found to be a high injury risk to passengers in the other car in a head-on collision.

Other issues noted with the Scorpio include curtain airbags that don’t extend to protecting passengers in row three and the driver’s seatbelt unlatching during a crash test.

Jeep Gladiator, Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Avenger (EV) – 3 stars

The Jeep Wrangler 4x4 wagon and its dual cab ute spin-off the Gladiator are rated together because they share their fundamental structures and safety systems.

This safety story kicks off with the launch of the JL Wrangler, which scored only a single star in ANCAP testing back in 2019.

Cheaper variants missed out on AEB while there were criticisms across the range for the life-threatening lack of chest protection for the driver and rear passengers in frontal crash tests.

While renowned for its toughness, the Wrangler did not cope well structurally in crash testing. It suffered failures of both the A-pillar – that’s what holds the windscreen up - and cross-fascia beam– that’s what holds the dashboard up!

Footwell intrusion, high seatbelt loads and excessive pedal movement were also noted.

The latter could lead to potential leg injuries for the driver, while the upper legs of both front passengers were at risk from errant dashboard structures in accidents.

Jeep responded to the disastrous result by making AEB and blind spot monitoring standard across the range in 2020 and this resulted in a boost to three stars after testing.

However, the AEB system still did not detect pedestrians or cyclists, nor was lane keeping made available. And the structural deficiencies were not addressed.

The Gladiator inherited the same ANCAP rating when it launched in 2020.

The Jeep Avenger’s 3-star safety rating was announced in December 2024, making it one of the more recent ratings in this group but not any better.

The all-electric Avenger was marked down in the areas of Vulnerable Road User Protection where, according to ANCAP, testing of the autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system for pedestrians showed marginal performance for both adult and child pedestrians.

The Avenger’s safety assist systems were also scored low because ANCAP noted the AEB system did not react to when crossing the path of another vehicle or in head-on scenarios. It was also noted that a child presence detection (CPD) system is not available.

Suzuki Jimny - 3 stars

The Suzuki Jimny is a compact 4x4 with a cult following in Australia. Its three-star safety rating applies only to the three-door and not the more recent five-door model.

Tested in 2019, ANCAP’s engineers found there were a bunch of structural issues with the Jimny in crash testing including excessive deformation of the passenger compartment, steering wheel displacement and pedal intrusion.

All that meant potential injuries for the chest, legs and knees of front-seat passengers.

The driver’s airbag also didn’t inflate enough to stop a head hit on the steering wheel in a big impact.

Being hit by the Jimny is also a serious health risk for pedestrians and cyclists and its safety assist features such as AEB proved to be ineffective.

The Jimny actually did its best work protecting children in the rear seat in a crash test.

MG3 – 3 stars

The MG3 small hatchback is the newest car here, so it’s been tested to the toughest ANCAP protocols.

That means its three-star result is probably more impressive than five stars being handed out a decade ago.

It scored consistently well enough in all test areas except Safety Assist to merit at least four ANCAP stars. Its Vulnerable Road User rating was good enough for five stars.

It was let down in the Safety Assist criteria by an autonomous emergency braking system that did not respond in reversing, crossing or head-on emergency scenarios.

Serious injury concerns were reported for the driver’s right shoulder in an oblique pole test – simulating a hit into a pole or tree – and the chest of a 10-year-old child in the rear seat in a side impact - which simulates a t-bone accident.

Who are Australia's crash testers?

ANCAP is the Australasian New Car assessment Program. It is an independent body – RAC WA is one of its funders - that has been assessing the safety of new vehicles sold in Australia for more than 20 years.

ANCAP started out focused on physical crash testing using instrumented dummies to assess how that impacted adult and children riding in the vehicle. But over the years it has expanded and toughened its tests as manufacturers have added more safety features and improved vehicle structure.

These tests are usually tougher than those required by mandatory Australian Design Rules. While it has no legal power, an ANCAP five-star rating has come to be prized by car brands as a promotional tool and to help gain fleet sales.

Its reports are now split into four different areas – adult occupant protection, child occupant protection, vulnerable road user protection and safety assist, which refers to collision avoidance technologies like autonomous emergency braking.

Results are awarded out of a maximum five stars. The number of stars awarded is based on the vehicle’s performance in its least impressive results.

So, if a car scores five stars in adult occupant protection but zero stars in safety assist the latter is what the entire rating will be determined by.

ANCAP does break down its scoring in detail in its technical reports, showing publicly how it rates each vehicle in each of the test criteria.

These reports also talk drily about protection afforded passengers as good, adequate, marginal, weak or poor. Be in no doubt, a poor rating means the potential for serious injury or death.

Bearing all that in mind let’s explain in plain language what ANCAP’s scores tell us about the vehicles with the poorest scores.

Just announced

The Suzuki Swift received a 1-star safety rating from ANCAP in December 2024. According to ANCAP, locally sold Swift models differ in their safety capabilities from Swifts sold in Europe. This prompted tests to be undertaken for Swift models sold in Australia and New Zealand, which revealed areas of concern.

In particular, the Swift demonstrated poor scores for both adult and child occupant protection in the frontal offset and full width crash tests. ANCAP said some of the structural elements and restraints in locally-sold Swift vehicles appear to lack robustness, serving as an important reminder for prospective buyers to check the ANCAP safety rating of the vehicle they’re looking to buy.