Toyota is the outright winner of Australia's peak automotive industry safety awards. Toyota won the industry division of the 1999 Windscreens O'Brien Awards for its Global Outstanding Assessment (GOA) program. The program guarantees vehicles are built to the world's highest safety standards. The Toyota win marks the first time award judges have not awarded the industry prize to either a vehicle or a particular safety device. The Awards recognise major safety advances introduced by the automotive industry in the past 12 months. Toyota's GOA program designs cars to meet all current and proposed safety standards worldwide. The GOA program defines the most stringent possible regulations likely to be in place for passenger motor vehicles within the predictable future, and then ensures all new Toyota models are built to meet or exceed those standards. Toyota updated GOA in 1999 using expanded criteria in the production of the newly released Echo and Celica. The judging panel, in presenting Toyota with the award at a ceremony in Melbourne, recognised the vehicle maker's stated aim of producing the safest vehicle in every class in which it is represented. The judges said: "The application of the GOA process across Toyota's passenger car range, and therefore the number of people who would benefit from the initiative whether in small or large vehicles, was a factor in its success in the 1999 awards. "Toyota's willingness to make such a public commitment to compliance with all existing and projected safety standards worldwide may also encourage other manufacturers to take a similar positioning. " In accepting the award, Toyota Australia's manager - passenger vehicles, product management division, Adrian Weimers, said that every new vehicle platform from Toyota will now comply with GOA. Mr Weimers also highlighted the opening of Toyota's new $2 million test facility at Anglesea in Victoria as a local contributor to the international GOA program. "The Toyota Test Track incorporates the very worst of Australian road conditions including replicated tram tracks, railway crossing corrugations and pot holes," Mr Weimers said. "The result is that we are able to test at Anglesea under strictly controlled conditions - and that assists our world engineering requirements. " The community division of the Windscreens O'Brien Awards was won by the NRMA's SHIFT program, an innovative CD-ROM aimed at reducing the numbers of young drivers in motor vehicle accidents.