Will MBz get the usual high ratings?
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With almost 90 per cent of new vehicles achieving the highest five-star ratings and a trunkful of electronic aids available to new-car buyers, it can take a lot of detective work to sort out which vehicles truly are safer than others.
To help out, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will make it harder for vehicles to score the coveted maximum five-star rating, as well as make the manufacturers add its ratings and list the vehicle's safety technology on a window sticker.
The New Car Assessment Program sticker will include an overall safety rating for each vehicle that consolidates results from the front-, side- and pole-impact and rollover tests. Vehicles currently get separate ratings for each test.
The three safety technologies to be listed that the NHTSA see as "particularly helpful in preventing accidents and injury" are: electronic stability control, lane departure warning systems and forward collision warning systems.
The new window sticker will be in addition to the current price and fuel consumption info found on what is commonly known as the "Monroney sticker," named after Almer Stillwell Monroney, the Oklahoma senator who sponsored the Automobile Information Disclosure Act of 1958.
The new regulations go into effect for the 2010 model year. The changes will also apply to Canadian market vehicles.
The new testing procedures will also include for the first time female crash dummies. To date, the dummies are modelled after an averaged-sized male.
For more information, go to:
www.safercar.gov
and look for : New Car Assessment
U.S. crash tests toughened 
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