Predicting NCAP Safety Ratings: An Analysis of Vehicle Characteristics and ADAS Features Using Machine Learning

Abstract

Vehicle safety assessment is crucial for consumer information and regulatory oversight. The New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) assigns standardized safety ratings, which traditionally emphasize passive safety measures but now include active safety technologies such as Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS). It is crucial to understand how these various systems interact empirically. This study explores whether particular ADAS features like Forward Collision Warning, Lane Departure Warning, Crash Imminent Braking, and Blind Spot Detection, together with established vehicle attributes (e.g., Curb Weight, Model Year, Vehicle Type, Drive Train), can reliably predict a vehicle's likelihood of earning the highest (5-star) overall NCAP rating. Using a publicly available dataset derived from NCAP reports that contain approximately 5,128 vehicle variants spanning model years 2011-2025, we compared four different machine learning models: logistic regression, random forest, gradient boosting, and support vector classifier (SVC) using a 5-fold stratified cross-validation approach. The two best-performing algorithms (random forest and gradient boost) were hyperparameter optimized using RandomizedSearchCV. Analysis of feature importance showed that basic vehicle characteristics, specifically curb weight and model year, dominated predictive capability, contributing more than 55% of the feature relevance of the Random Forest model. However, the inclusion of ADAS features also provided meaningful predictive contributions. The optimized Random Forest model achieved robust results on a held-out test set, with an accuracy of 89.18% and a ROC AUC of 0.9586. This research reveals the use of machine learning to analyze large-scale NCAP data and highlights the combined predictive importance of both established vehicle parameters and modern ADAS features to achieve top safety ratings.