If you’ve been looking for a new 2020 Volkswagen Golf with a rear ejector seat then I have some good news for you. Euro NCAP crash tests have shown that the rear driver’s side door could pop open in an accident, which is definitely not something you want car doors to do.
A door popping open in an accident is penalised by Euro NCAP, a crash test safety rating organisation, as presenting a critical risk of ejection. The whole point of crash safety is to prevent people from flying out of the car and finding new ways to get hurt. Having a door pop open unexpectedly under pressure kind of nullifies that whole point.
From Motor1:
“Door openings during a crash are penalised in Euro NCAP since the start as they represent a critical ejection risk to occupants,” Michiel van Ratingen, secretary-general of Euro NCAP, commented. “Door openings are rare nowadays and it is important that VW is committed to finding the root cause.”
Somehow, though, the 2020 Golf (which, oddly, is noted on the NCAP as being a 2019 Golf, despite the 2020 Golf being pictured; that number, though, appears to stand for the test’s publication date of December 2019 rather than the car’s model year) still earned a perfect five-star score in terms of overall safety. I guess the little hatchback was just so great in every other respect that the possibility of your backseat pals being ejected from the car wasn’t that big of a deal.
And it wasn’t the only VW to suffer from that problem. A door popped open on the VW Sharan during testing last month, which shows that this might be something Volkswagen is struggling with across the board. We’ve reached out to VW for comment and will update this blog when we hear back.