Renowned car safety programme, Euro NCAP, has released its latest crash test results, awarding the 2024 versions of both the Dacia Duster and Suzuki Swift just three stars out of a possible five.
Despite both the Dacia and Suzuki sporting autonomous emergency braking, emergency lane-keeping systems, intelligent speed limiters and driver fatigue detection – features now required by legislation – Euro NCAP says neither go beyond this in terms of active safety features and therefore miss out on higher scores.
Dacia, the subsidiary of Renault that has long stood for value and affordability, has historically struggled to achieve impressive scores in the independent crash assessments, due to Euro NCAP’s demands for advanced safety assist functionality. Its Jogger model, for example, achieved just one star during crash testing in 2021.
A lack of cyclist dooring prevention, automatic emergency braking that detects pedestrians when reversing and child presence detection all help keep the costs of Duster and other Dacia models down, but continues to do little to appease the assessors.
Overall, the Duster scored better than the Suzuki Swift on both adult and child occupant safety, but fell behind slightly when it came to protecting vulnerable road users and offering driver assistance systems.
Despite this, the overall star rating result proved the same for both cars, and hasn’t improved since they were last tested in 2011 (Duster) and 2017 (Swift).
At the other end of the spectrum, Euro NCAP heaped praise on Mercedes-Benz and Skoda, which saw the full five star rating applied to the latest E-Class, Kodiaq SUV and Superb.
However, Euro NCAP says the E-Class is ‘uncomfortably close’ to losing a star against Euro NCAP’s latest protocols due to it offering poor impact protection, especially in the pelvis area of pedestrians.
“This latest release reveals a growing split between the safety ambitions of different car brands,” says Dr Michiel van Ratingen, Secretary General Euro NCAP.
“Some, like Mercedes-Benz, Skoda, VW, BMW, and Renault, are convinced of their customers’ commitment to safety and its higher worth in the product offering.
“For Dacia and Suzuki, the emphasis is on affordability, but consumers should be in no doubt that there are competitor vehicles to the Duster and the Swift available on the market, which offer considerably higher levels of safety. This is something you cannot put a price on,” van Ratingen added.
