Vehicle Safety and Driver Assist Technologies

At Ford, we aim to Go Further. That’s our brand promise, and it’s a promise that focuses us on creating great products, a strong business and a better world. Part of that brand promise involves giving customers peace of mind and making the world safer by developing an array of advanced safety technologies and making them available across a wide range of vehicles.

These technologies include everything from high-strength steels and world-first rear-seat inflatable seat belts to radar-based driver assist technologies and technologies that encourage safer driving, such as the Ford MyKey® system. Going Further also means working with partners to create a future in which connected vehicles talk to each other, and to the roadway, in order to potentially avoid accidents and traffic jams.

In short, vehicle safety is a critical part of our aim to Go Further, and we work to build in safety from the very beginning of each product development process. Indeed, safety is one of four global brand pillars that guide our every design and engineering effort.1

Ford remains among the global leaders in vehicle safety. To date, for example, Ford Motor Company has earned more “Top Safety Picks” from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) – a total of 78 – than any other manufacturer in the seven-year history of that crash testing program.2 To earn a Top Safety Pick, a vehicle must receive a rating of “good” in offset frontal impact, side impact, rear impact and roof strength evaluations, and offer electronic stability control.

Our recent safety highlights include the following:

• Twelve Ford Motor Company vehicles earned Top Safety Picks from the IIHS in 2012: The Ford Fiesta (sedan and hatchback), Focus, Fusion, Taurus, Edge, Explorer, Flex and F-150 (crew cab) and the Lincoln MKZ, MKS, MKT and MKX.
• The Ford Fusion has been an IIHS Top Safety Pick for four years in a row (2009–2012).
• The Ford Ranger and the Ford Focus both earned five-star safety ratings in the revised and more stringent 2012 European New Car Assessment Program (EuroNCAP) assessments.
• The new European Ford Ranger, designed by engineers in Ford of Australia, is the first and only pick-up to achieve a five-star rating in the EuroNCAP assessment. It scored 89 percent for overall safety – the best score ever earned by a pick-up and one of the highest scores recorded by EuroNCAP for any type of vehicle. Moreover, the new Ranger achieved the highest rating (81 percent) of any vehicle ever tested by EuroNCAP for pedestrian protection.
• The Ford Focus now has an industry-leading total of four EuroNCAP “Advanced Awards” for offering Lane Keeping Aid, Active City Stop, Forward Alert and Driver Alert technologies.
• The Ford Fiesta was awarded a five-star rating in the Chinese NCAP during 2011.
• The 2011 Ford Territory, Falcon, Kuga, Ranger and Focus were all awarded five-star ratings in the Australasian NCAP.
• In the newly founded Latin NCAP, the Ford Focus achieved a best-in-class four-star rating for adult protection and three stars for child protection.
• The 2013 Ford Taurus Police Interceptor will be the only police pursuit sedan on the market tested in 75-mph rear-end crash tests.
• The 2012 Ford Fiesta is the first vehicle in its class to offer a driver’s knee airbag.
• Our available rear-seat inflatable safety belts, launched on the 2011 Ford Explorer, are an automotive industry exclusive and have won numerous awards. In the 2012 model year, we expanded the availability of these safety belts in North America to the Ford Flex and the Lincoln MKT.
• In South America, the 2012 Ford Edge was first-in-segment to offer Blind Spot Information System (BLIS). The 2013 Ford Fusion will also be first-in-segment to offer BLIS. BLIS uses radar sensors to help inform the driver when a vehicle is detected in the blind spot zone.
• In 2011 we introduced Lane Keeping System, a driver assist feature, in Europe on the new Ford Focus. Its availability will be expanded to North America on the 2013 Lincoln MKS, MKT, MKZ and Ford Explorer and Fusion.
• We launched Curve Control on the 2011 Ford Explorer. This driver assist technology helps slow the vehicle when it senses the driver is taking a curve too quickly. We are expanding the availability of Curve Control to the 2013 Ford Taurus and Flex and the 2013 Lincoln MKS and MKT. A majority of Ford’s products will be equipped with Curve Control by 2015.

The 2012 Ford Fusion