The Lexus NX200 secured a five-star safety rating and the Honda Fit secured a four-star rating in the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Taiwan New Car Assessment Program this quarter.
The program, which the ministry established in 2022, tests the safety of some of the best-selling vehicles in Taiwan.
The ministry tasked the Automotive Research and Testing Center, a government-funded facility in Changhua County, to conduct vehicle collision tests.
Photo: Wu Liang-yi, Taipei Times
Since last year, the center has released the test results of two models each quarter. The highest safety rating is five stars.
The Lexus NX200 was granted a five-star safety rating after scoring 83 percent in protection of adult occupants, 88 percent in child protection, 83 percent in pedestrian protection and 72 percent in safety assistance, the results showed.
The Honda Fit was given a four-star rating after scoring 81 percent in adult occupant protection, 72 percent in child protection, 81 percent in pedestrian protection and 67 percent in safety assistance.
The rating only applies to gasoline-powered Honda Fits, not those powered by hybrid synergy.
The center is to disclose the results of testing of the Nissan X-Trail next quarter, the Toyota Sienta in the third quarter, and the Tesla Model Y and Honda CR-V in the fourth quarter.
Of the vehicles undergoing testing this year, the Nissan X-Trail and Honda CR-V manufacturers volunteered and paid to have their vehicles tested by the center.
The Nissan X-Trail secured a three-star rating last year and the manufacturer asked to have the model tested again this year, the center said.
All of the vehicles to be tested would be procured by mystery shoppers from the market, the center said, adding that evaluation criteria are the same, regardless of whether automakers pay for the tests themselves.
The center was previously scheduled to test the Tesla Model 3 this year, but as it is unavailable for purchase in Taiwan, it is to test the Model Y in the fourth quarter and the Model 3 in the first quarter next year, it said.
From next year, the center would begin testing vehicles’ protection for motorcyclists, cyclists and other road users, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching