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In 1978, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) established the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and began rating vehicles for frontal impact safety for MY1979 with the purpose of providing information to the public so consumers could make better-informed decisions about their purchases. Manufacturers responded to the ratings by voluntarily improving the safety of their vehicles beyond the minimum Federal safety standards. In 1996, NHTSA added testing for side impact protection and more recently to assess the vehicle's rollover propensity. After NHTSA's NCAP, other organizations have followed testing the passive safety performance of the vehicles and publishing the results to the customers with the intention of improving the protection given by the vehicles. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) started in 1995 with an offset frontal impact test and in 2002 with a side impact test using a mobile barrier that represents the typical SUV frontend.

Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE), a research project funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, has developed the technology and the strategy to create fully functional road trains that allow vehicle platoons to operate in public highways. The project intends to establish important concepts to show why platooning systems are a good way to increase safety and reduce pollution on tomorrow's highways. As part of the activities within the project, the authors performed fuel consumption simulations to estimate the fuel consumption reduction of the platoon due to the aerodynamics improvement. Dynamic simulations of the platoon behaviour in certain normal and emergency situations were also performed. Fuel consumption tests were also performed in companies proving grounds. These tests were performed using two trucks and three cars. Different platoon configurations were used, involving some or all the vehicles.