Used Car Safety Ratings (UCSR) help you identify safer second hand cars.

The ratings illustrate the likelihood of a driver being killed or seriously injured once a crash has occurred. The car's handling, drivability, distance driven and the driver's behaviour have no influence on the results presented.

The latest UCSR are based on statistics collected from car crashes in Australia and New Zealand between 1987 and 2005, where someone was killed or seriously injured. Over two million police reported crashes are analysed in the latest UCSR.

Some of the assumptions and qualifications about the crash records and methodology used include:

• TAC claims records and NSW and Queensland Police crash reports accurately recorded driver injury, hospitalisation and death
• there was no bias in the merging of TAC claims and Victoria Police crash reports related to the model of car and factors affecting the severity of the crash
• crashed car registration numbers were recorded accurately on police crash reports and they correctly identified crashed cars on each of the respective State registration databases
• the adjustments for driver sex, age, speed zone, the number of cars involved and the state and years in which the crash occurred removed the influences of the other main factors available in the data, which affected crash severity and injury susceptibility
• the form of the logistic models used to relate injury risk and injury severity with the available factors influencing these outcomes (including the car models) was correct
• only driver crash involvements and injuries have been considered. Passengers occupying the same model cars may have had different injury outcomes
• some models with the same name through the 1982-98 years of manufacture may have varied substantially in their construction and mass. Although there should be few such models in these results, the rating score calculated for these models may give a misleading impression and should be interpreted with caution
• other factors not collected in the data (e.g. crash speed) may differ between the models and may affect the results. However, earlier analysis has suggested that the different rating scores are predominantly due to car factors alone