The Mercedes-Benz E-Class Is The Best Car To Crash, Says Euro NCAP
The Mercedes-Benz E-Class has another feather to stick in its cap. According to the Euro New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP), Mercedes’ mid-size sedan was the best vehicle the agency tested last year, with a five-star overall safety rating, good showings in each crash test, and excellent performance from its active safety features. As a result, Euro NCAP called the E-Class its “Best Performer” of 2024, an honor that Mercedes was quick to tout given its legacy for vehicle safety.
Acing The Crash Course
Euro NCAP has been crashing cars into walls for nearly 30 years at this point, and its crash test safety ratings are still what it’s primarily known for. The agency currently uses five separate crash tests: full-width frontal, frontal offset, side barrier, side pole, and rear impact. As photos of the crash aftermath show, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan did very well in each test, showing limited injury measures in each type of collision, regardless of the passenger’s seating location or relative size.
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Nothing’s perfect, however, and the 50th-percentile male dummies seated in the front during the offset-type crash showed a small risk of injuries to their legs. Meanwhile, in the full-width frontal crash, a fifth-percentile female dummy in the rear seat showed a slight risk of chest injuries. Otherwise, the E-Class protected its simulated occupants very well, even in the punshing side-impact pole test that approximates a particularly violent type of crash: sliding off the road and wrapping your car around a tree.
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Protecting Your Neighbors, Too
In addition to its battery of impact tests, Euro NCAP also evaluated the E-Class for safety against “vulnerable road users,” which include pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Equipped with standard Active Brake Assist, the Benz performed quite well, avoiding crashes in many scenarios and even preventing “dooring” a passing cyclist. Euro NCAP found some areas for improvement – the car took too much time to detect a child running into the road from between two parked cars at night, for example – but in most other tests, it prevented injuries.
Euro NCAP even found that in the event of a pedestrian or cyclist collision, the E-Class proved to be a reasonably soft place to land. Much of the front structure provided good head protection for the unfortunate ped, although the impact might cause injuries to the pelvis and legs. Still, Euro NCAP gave the E-Class 28.1 out of a possible 36 points for impact protection, a better score than any other similarly priced four-door tested last year.
How’s The E-Class Do In American Safety Tests?
Euro NCAP’s American equivalent, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), hasn’t tested the E-Class yet, but the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has. In the non-profit agency’s testing, the Mercedes sedan excelled in each test, earning scores of Good (the IIHS’ highest) in metrics that include small-overlap, moderate-overlap, and side impact crashes.
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It also achieved an Acceptable grade – one rung down from the top – for pedestrian crash prevention with its standard automatic emergency braking system. Cars equipped with the optional Driver Assistance package earned Good scores in pedestrian collision prevention.
Source: Euro NCAP
