N.H.T.S.A. Solicits Public Comment on Vehicle Safety Evaluations In an effort to improve its New Car Assessment Program, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is seeking comments from the public on several areas of vehicle safety, including new rules to protect pedestrians and children. Each year, N.H.T.S.A., which regulates vehicle safety standards, conducts frontal and side crash tests as well as rollover assessments on new vehicles under the New Car Assessment Program, which was established in 1978. The agency then provides information for consumers regarding the relative safety of those vehicles using a five-star rating system. Five stars are given to the safest vehicles and one star to the least safe. This five-star rating is what consumers see on new vehicle window stickers as well as on N.H.T.S.A."s Web site. The agency is seeking public comment regarding the following areas of vehicle safety: Increasing safety for rear seat occupants by improving rear compartments or adding technologies like rear seat belt reminders, or both; Adding a "silver car" rating system to the five-star system to provide crash safety information for older consumers; Incorporating pedestrian crash-worthiness requirements into the program; Adding a "family star rating," which would rate vehicles based on the protection they offer to children in the rear seat in a similar way the agency rates the protection offered to adults in the front seat; Developing a way to directly compare the safety of vehicles in a frontal crash that have significant variations in their weight and type (for example, the effects of a collision between a Smart Fortwo and a Chevrolet Suburban); Incorporating into the program an evaluation of advanced technologies that intervene to prevent crashes. The agency has made changes to the program over the years, most recently in 2011 when it added a new pole test and created a single overall rating score. Some of the proposed changes are already part of a European crash testing program. The European system provides safety ratings for children and pedestrians. N.H.T.S.A. said it would use the comments it received to propose changes to the crash-testing program and to develop upgrades. The comment period ends on July 5. An earlier version of this post had an incorrect photograph of a crash test. The test was conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, not the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The photo has been replaced with one showing a N.H.T.S.A. test.