AA Motoring Services General Manager Stella Stocks says that while manufacturers have improved the safety attributes of their cars rapidly over the past years, Mercedes-Benz has once again edged the bar higher.

“Mercedes-Benz has often pushed the boundaries on safety technologies, and has succeeded again with the E-Class by creating a car that embodies the direction vehicle safety is going in – that is packing it full of intelligent systems that actively work to prevent crashes,” says Ms Stocks.

The significant safety assist and crash prevention technologies included in the vehicle gives drivers a real sense of the near autonomous capabilities of the vehicle.

In addition to all three grades of Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) as standard – including for vulnerable road users, the luxury vehicle has Intersection Collision Warning, which prevents nose to tail crashes and also detects traffic approaching from the side, autonomously applying the brakes.

The E-Class also includes rollover occupant protection systems as standard, which stabilises the vehicle first, but also minimises the risk of injury to passengers if the vehicle does roll by protecting occupants through roll-over bars that can be extended in fractions of a second as soon as the airbag control system’s crash sensors detect the risk of an accident.

The 5 star rating applies to all W213 E-Class variants built from December 2015.

Alongside the ANCAP announcement of the E-Class is the 5 star rating awarded to Japan’s Car of the Year, the Subaru Impreza, due to be released in New Zealand early next year.

Tests for pedestrian protection returned some impressive results for head impacts on the bonnet and blows to the leg from the bumper.

While the rating applies to all variants of the Impreza, New Zealand will only see the Impreza Sport and that too in limited numbers at this stage.

Similarly, the Fiat 500X also achieved the highest ANCAP rating. The rating applies to all 500X variants built from July 2016 and will be available in New Zealand in 2017.

The full list of ANCAP’s vehicle safety ratings, other vehicle safety information and the specifications of the rated vehicles are available online at ancap.co.nz or rightcar.govt.nz.

ANCAP is supported by all Australian motoring clubs, the New Zealand Automobile Association, the Australian Government, the New Zealand Government, Australian state and territory governments, the Victorian Transport Accident Commission, NRMA Insurance and the FIA Foundation.