Land Rover Defender scored a maximum rating of five stars in the Euro NCAP crash testLand Rover Defender

Land Rover Defender scores five stars in the Euro NCAP crash test

The Land Rover Defender scored 85 per cent for child and adult occupant safety and 79 per cent for Safety Assist on its way to a five-star overall score

The new Land Rover Defender 110 has added yet another feather to its cap by securing the maximum rating of five stars in the Euro NCAP crash test. Adult and child occupant safety was a solid 85 per cent whereas pedestrian and safety assist score was at 71 and 79 per cent respectively. We were thoroughly impressed with the Defender ever since we first drove it and the crash test results make it an even better package.

Starting off with the features already present within the the new Land Rover Defender: it comes equipped with six airbags, three ISOFIX anchor points for child occupants, autonomous emergency braking system, 3D surround cameras, blind spot assist, lane assist, adaptive cruise control, traffic sign recognition, eCall, multi collision braking and driver condition monitor as standard.

It was this impressive list of safety features helped the Defender get a near perfect score in the stringent Euro NCAP crash test and this is definitely going to attract more customers.

Moving now to the crash test report, the aluminium body of the Defender took the front and rear impact well and was still capable of taking further loads. During the crash test, it was observed that all the protection for all the occupants’ critical body parts was good, with the Defender scoring maximum points in both the side barrier and pole impact tests. In fact, the only scoring point which wasn’t exceptional was the rear passengers’ chest protection which was rated ‘marginal’.

Next, the presence of the e-call system which sends a message to the rescue services instantly in the event of a crash gave it a good score when it came to rescue and recovery rating.

Coming to child safety, the Defender scored the maximum attainable points of 24. However, the optional ‘Britax Römer KidFix XP’ seatbelts in the third row, failed the belt-length test. Overall though, the Defender had the maximum attainable score when it came to child safety as well.

Pedestrian safety was also exceptional, thanks to the Defender’s autonomous emergency braking which comes as a standard. The tests showed that the car could detect pedestrians and cyclists well and it avoided or mitigated the crash in most cases. The system, however, does not detect pedestrians in the rear and no reverse tests were performed either.

The driver assistance systems like lane assist and the AEB worked well in detecting the presence of other vehicles to reduce the risk of a crash. The Defender also has ‘Driver Drowsiness Detection’ which provides steering inputs when it detects that the driver is fatigued and even issues a warning. The steering support system gave gentle assistance while the car drifted out of the lane and when required, kicked in quite aggressively to give corrective steering inputs. Another interesting feature that helped the Defender get a good score was the speed assistance system which uses cameras and a digital map to detect local speed limits. This helps the car to always be well under the speed limit.

The detailed break-up of the crash test ratings are as follows: