ANCAP, Asean NCAP, China NCAP, Euro NCAP, Japan NCAP, Korea NCAP, Latin NCAP and US NCAP and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), define the standards that vehicles must meet to be awarded a top safety rating of five stars.

In Europe, crash avoidance and mitigation systems such as adult and child occupant protection systems, pedestrian protection systems and assistance systems such as Electronic Stability Control (ESC), Autonomous Emergency Braking Systems (AEBS), and Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) systems are a basic requirement for achieving this rating.

“We have been pursuing our long-term strategy ‘Vision Zero’ for many years. With innovations and by continuously refining and improving our components and systems, we are playing a leading part in the drive to improve road safety," commented Frank Jourdan, member of the executive board of Continental AG and president of the Chassis & Safety Division.

"We see ‘Vision Zero’ as comprising three successive stages: of paramount importance is the avoidance of any traffic fatalities, then reducing the number of injuries to zero. If there are no more accidents at all, we have fulfilled our ‘Vision Zero'.

“Since seatbelts, ESC, tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) and AEBS for commercial vehicles became mandatory,
the total number of road traffic fatalities, injuries and accidents has declined significantly. That said, the annual toll of more than 1.2 million people killed on the world’s roads every year is still shockingly high and not acceptable. We must make a concerted effort to reduce these numbers,” he added.

Throughout the ‘Stop the Crash’ campaign, Global NCAP and its partners, including Continental, will be holding driving demonstrations to raise awareness of the benefits of safety technologies that are already being volume-produced and to encourage their adoption in subcompact and compact models too. The regional focus will be on densely populated developing countries, where large numbers of vehicles are sold in these vehicle segments. In terms of vehicle technology the focus will be on ESC and AEBS, while on the tire side the importance of adequate tire pressure and tread depth will be highlighted.

Continental expects the twice-yearly ‘Stop the Crash’ demonstration events in countries such as China, India, Malaysia, and Mexico, to raise awareness of the benefits of state-of-the-art safety systems, and of tire-related topics. The aim is to achieve a further significant improvement in global road safety and further steady reductions in the number of traffic fatalities, injuries, and accidents.

The Global NCAP ‘Stop the Crash’ campaign will be officially launched on November 18, 2015, with a driving demonstration to coincide with the second Global High-Level Conference on Road Safety. The motto of this meeting of world political leaders, fleet managers and the media representatives will be ‘Time for Results’.

‘Stop the Crash’ will conduct its campaign via the www.stopthecrash.org website, which will serve as the main point of contact, and via other platforms including the #stopthecrash hashtag on online and social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.