4.3.2 Testing EU Compliant Vehicles to U.S. and EU Regulation

As stated previously, the differing side impact requirements in the U.S. and EU may cause different countermeasures to be designed into the vehicles sold in each market. The first phase of testing described in Section 4.2 is a set of eight U.S. compliant vehicles tested to the EU regulation. Presumably these vehicles were designed to meet the U.S. regulation. Through cooperation with industry, an attempt could be made to identify vehicles designed to meet the EU or both the EU and U.S. regulations. If such vehicles exist they could be tested to both regulations. This set of information could then be used to give an even clearer indication of the relative safety benefits of each regulation.