Mini cars don't fare well in collisions with mid sized cars!

WASHINGTON — Micro cars can give motorists top-notch fuel efficiency at
a competitive price, but the insurance industry says they do not fare
well in collisions with larger vehicles.

In crash tests released Tuesday, the Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety found that drivers of 2009 versions of the Smart "fortwo," Honda
Fit and Toyota Yaris could face significant leg and head injuries in
severe front-end crashes with larger, mid-size vehicles.

"There are good reasons people buy mini cars. They're more affordable,
and they use less gas. But the safety trade-offs are clear from our new
tests," said Adrian Lund, the institute's president.

Automakers who manufacture the small cars said the tests simulated a
high-speed crash that rarely happens on the road. They also said the
tests rehashed past insurance industry arguments against tougher fuel
efficiency requirements. The institute has raised questions about
whether stricter gas mileage rules, which are being developed by the
government, might lead to smaller, lighter vehicles that could be less safe.

"If you were to take that argument to the nth degree, we should all be
driving 18-wheelers. And the trend in society today is just the
opposite," said Dave Schembri, president of Smart USA.

Sales of small cars soared when gas prices topped $4 per gallon ($1.05
per liter) last year but have fallen off as gasoline has retreated to
about $2 a gallon ($0.53 per liter) and the economic downturn has slowed
car sales. The small cars are affordable — prices of the three cars
tested range from about $12,000 to $18,000 — and typically achieve 30
miles per gallon (13 kilometers per liter) or more.

The tests involved head-on crashes between the fortwo and a 2009
Mercedes C Class, the Fit and a 2009 Honda Accord and the Yaris and the
2009 Toyota Camry. The tests were conducted at 40 miles per hour (17
kilometers per liter), representing a severe crash.

In the fortwo collision, the institute said the Smart, which weighs
1,808 lbs, went airborne and turned around 450 degrees after striking
the C Class, which weighs nearly twice as much. There was extensive
damage to the fortwo's interior and the Smart driver could have faced
extensive injuries to the head and legs. There was little damage to the
front seat area of the C Class.

Schembri said the test simulated a "rare and extreme scenario" and noted
that the fortwo had received solid ratings from the government's crash
test program. The fortwo has received top scores from the Insurance
Institute in front-end and side crash tests against comparably sized
vehicles, but in the front-end tests against the C Class, the institute
gave the minicar poor marks.

In the Fit's test, the dummy's head struck the steering wheel through
the air bag and showed a high risk of leg injuries. In the
vehicle-to-vehicle test, the Fit was rated poor while the Accord's
structure held up well.

Honda spokesman Todd Mittleman said the tests involved "unusual and
extreme conditions" and noted that all 2009 Honda vehicles had received
top scores from the Insurance Institute.

In the Yaris test, the institute said the mini car sustained damage to
the door and front passenger area. The driver dummy showed signs of head
injuries, a deep gash on the right knee and extensive forces to the neck
and right leg.

The Yaris has received good ratings in past front and side testing but
received a poor rating in the crash with the Camry. Toyota spokesman
John Hanson said the car-to-car test had little relevance to consumers
because of its severity.

"It's fairly obvious that they have an agenda here with regard to how
smaller cars are going to be entering the North American market in
larger numbers," Hanson said.


--
Steve W.

"Steve W." > wrote in
:

> WASHINGTON — Micro cars can give motorists top-notch fuel efficiency at
> a competitive price, but the insurance industry says they do not fare
> well in collisions with larger vehicles.
>

Hardly ground-breaking news that is. However the bigger you get, the worse
they are at handling. So if you buy an suv and drive at the speed limit,
you'll have more accidents. Without paying for it in injuries. Nice.

Roger Blake wrote:
> On 2009-04-14, fred > wrote:
>> Hardly ground-breaking news that is. However the bigger you get, the worse
>> they are at handling. So if you buy an suv and drive at the speed limit,
>> you'll have more accidents. Without paying for it in injuries. Nice.
>
> Sounds like a good tradeoff to me. Those of us who have some sense
> can be safe in our large, heavy vehicles while the stoopid hippies
> in their ludicrous "green" cars (aka "tin cans") pay the price for
> their foolishness.
>
> I don't see the problem.
>
Well, I have had small cars all my life, and I am 71 already. So if I
am so stupid I must be quite lucky. I also just bought a green car. It
is larger and heavier than many of the cars I have already owned.

BTW, as someone else said, those small cars of mine have definitely been
the best handling.

Don Stauffer wrote:
> Roger Blake wrote:
>> On 2009-04-14, fred > wrote:
>>> Hardly ground-breaking news that is. However the bigger you get, the
>>> worse
>>> they are at handling. So if you buy an suv and drive at the speed limit,
>>> you'll have more accidents. Without paying for it in injuries. Nice.
>>
>> Sounds like a good tradeoff to me. Those of us who have some sense
>> can be safe in our large, heavy vehicles while the stoopid hippies
>> in their ludicrous "green" cars (aka "tin cans") pay the price for
>> their foolishness.
>>
>> I don't see the problem.
>>
> Well, I have had small cars all my life, and I am 71 already. So if I
> am so stupid I must be quite lucky. I also just bought a green car. It
> is larger and heavier than many of the cars I have already owned.
>
> BTW, as someone else said, those small cars of mine have definitely been
> the best handling.

yup, the way I look at is the smart people can get away with driving
small, fun cars and the incompetent drivers have to drive the big barges
to keep from meeting an untimely death. That said I do have an F-150
for dump runs, but 99.44% of the time it is sitting in my driveway
collecting holly berries on the hood.

nate

--
replace "roosters" with "cox" to reply.
http://members.cox.net/njnagel

Nate Nagel wrote:
> Don Stauffer wrote:
>> Roger Blake wrote:
>>> On 2009-04-14, fred > wrote:
>>>> Hardly ground-breaking news that is. However the bigger you get, the
>>>> worse
>>>> they are at handling. So if you buy an suv and drive at the speed
>>>> limit,
>>>> you'll have more accidents. Without paying for it in injuries. Nice.
>>>
>>> Sounds like a good tradeoff to me. Those of us who have some sense
>>> can be safe in our large, heavy vehicles while the stoopid hippies
>>> in their ludicrous "green" cars (aka "tin cans") pay the price for
>>> their foolishness.
>>>
>>> I don't see the problem.
>>>
>> Well, I have had small cars all my life, and I am 71 already. So if I
>> am so stupid I must be quite lucky. I also just bought a green car.
>> It is larger and heavier than many of the cars I have already owned.
>>
>> BTW, as someone else said, those small cars of mine have definitely
>> been the best handling.
>
> yup, the way I look at is the smart people can get away with driving
> small, fun cars and the incompetent drivers have to drive the big barges
> to keep from meeting an untimely death.

And smart people can also drive big powerful cars or SUVs with limited
handling capabilities because they don't put themselves in all the
stupid situations that the people who drive annoying little red
roller-skates put themselves in. Such as decapitated under an
18-wheeler after trying to zig-zag through traffic to get somewhere 30
seconds sooner than just staying in a lane.

The key in any event is driving intelligently.

There is/was/used to be a guy who lived about nine miles from me, this
was back in the 1970s.He used to have three Vespa mini cars (I think
they were Vespas) sitting in his yard.I used to think someday I would
ask him if one of the cars was for sale.The cars aren't there anymore.I
have lost interest in them anyway.About fifteen miles further South, I
used to see one of those first models of a Suzuki car sitting in front
of an old abandoned house.It looked like it had been sitting up for
quite a few years.Little bitty Suzuki car, I think it had a two cylinder
engine, but I didn't stop to look closely at that car.
cuhulin

"Steve W." wrote:
>
> WASHINGTON - Micro cars can give motorists top-notch fuel efficiency at
> a competitive price, but the insurance industry says they do not fare
> well in collisions with larger vehicles.

So, if you drive a small car, don't go around hitting big ones.

Actually, don't go around hitting anything. I recall reading some
statistics that stated more accidents are single car rather than
multi-car. So, how well do small cars hold up when hitting 'terrain'?
Anecdotally, I'd say, "Not well".

Back when I worked for the local power company, I went out on a call
involving a pickup truck running off the road and hitting one of our
poles. When I arrived on the scene, they were pulling a 3/4 ton GMC back
onto the roadway. Before I could get around to look at its front end,
someone got into it and drove it off. The pole was sheared off at the
base.

A week or two later, one of my co-workers returned from a 'similar'
accident, where a compact car left the road and hit a similar sized
pole, traveling at a similar speed. They didn't know how many bodies
were in the car until they peeled it off the pole (I was glad I wasn't
called out on that one). The pole survived.

--
Paul Hovnanian
------------------------------------------------------------------
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
handle.

On Apr 15, 6:52*am, Roger Blake > wrote:
> On 2009-04-14, fred > wrote:
>
> > Hardly ground-breaking news that is. However the bigger you get, the worse
> > they are at handling. So if you buy an suv and drive at the speed limit,
> > you'll have more accidents. Without paying for it in injuries. Nice.
>
> Sounds like a good tradeoff to me. Those of us who have some sense
> can be safe in our large, heavy vehicles while the stoopid hippies
> in their ludicrous "green" cars (aka "tin cans") pay the price for
> their foolishness.
>
> I don't see the problem.
>
> --
> * Roger Blake
> * (Subtract 10s for email. "Google Groups" messages killfiled due to spam.)
> * "Obama dozed while people froze."

High speed head on or near head on collisions are very rare,
particularly in the US where divided highways are the norm. More
likely are side swipes by cars running parallel, or sideswipes with
cars in the opposite direction on undivided roads. In these cases, the
transfer of momentum depends on the angle more than on the difference
in mass, along with other factors like slippage of the tire on the
road depending on how the impact angle lines up with the direction of
the wheels. In any event, those are not the major source of deaths,
fatalities are commonly when a vehicle leaves the road and impacts a
stationary object; a tree, wall, light pole, building, abutment,
ditch, etc. etc. etc. And if you've studied freshman physics, you'll
remember that this type of collision is equivalent to striking a car
of equivalent mass and velocity so there's no advantage to being in a
heavy car, you're better off in a car with better designed crumple
zones, etc. whatever the weight is.

On Apr 16, 10:38*am, Steve > wrote:
> Nate Nagel wrote:
> > Don Stauffer wrote:
> >> Roger Blake wrote:
> >>> On 2009-04-14, fred > wrote:
> >>>> Hardly ground-breaking news that is. However the bigger you get, the
> >>>> worse
> >>>> they are at handling. So if you buy an suv and drive at the speed
> >>>> limit,
> >>>> you'll have more accidents. Without paying for it in injuries. Nice.
>
> >>> Sounds like a good tradeoff to me. Those of us who have some sense
> >>> can be safe in our large, heavy vehicles while the stoopid hippies
> >>> in their ludicrous "green" cars (aka "tin cans") pay the price for
> >>> their foolishness.
>
> >>> I don't see the problem.
>
> >> Well, I have had small cars all my life, and I am 71 already. *So if I
> >> am so stupid I must be quite lucky. *I also just bought a green car.
> >> It is larger and heavier than many of the cars I have already owned.
>
> >> BTW, as someone else said, those small cars of mine have definitely
> >> been the best handling.
>
> > yup, the way I look at is the smart people can get away with driving
> > small, fun cars and the incompetent drivers have to drive the big barges
> > to keep from meeting an untimely death.
>
> And smart people can also drive big powerful cars or SUVs with limited
> handling capabilities because they don't put themselves in all the
> stupid situations that the people who drive annoying little red
> roller-skates put themselves in. Such as *decapitated under an
> 18-wheeler after trying to zig-zag through traffic to get somewhere 30
> seconds sooner than just staying in a lane.
>
> The key in any event is driving intelligently.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

hey, if people want to drive a big truck for whatever reason, with the
handling of a big truck, then it stands to reason they ought to take
the truck driving test to get a truck driving license and follow truck
speed limits, etc.

On Apr 19, 2:05*am, "Paul Hovnanian P.E." > wrote:
> "Steve W." wrote:
>
> > WASHINGTON - *Micro cars can give motorists top-notch fuel efficiency at
> > a competitive price, but the insurance industry says they do not fare
> > well in collisions with larger vehicles.
>
> So, if you drive a small car, don't go around hitting big ones.
>
> Actually, don't go around hitting anything. I recall reading some
> statistics that stated more accidents are single car rather than
> multi-car. So, how well do small cars hold up when hitting 'terrain'?
> Anecdotally, I'd say, "Not well".
>
> Back when I worked for the local power company, I went out on a call
> involving a pickup truck running off the road and hitting one of our
> poles. When I arrived on the scene, they were pulling a 3/4 ton GMC back
> onto the roadway. Before I could get around to look at its front end,
> someone got into it and drove it off. The pole was sheared off at the
> base.
>
> A week or two later, one of my co-workers returned from a 'similar'
> accident, where a compact car left the road and hit a similar sized
> pole, traveling at a similar speed. They didn't know how many bodies
> were in the car until they peeled it off the pole (I was glad I wasn't
> called out on that one). The pole survived.
>
> --
> Paul Hovnanian * *
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
> * * * * Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
> * * * * handle.

i did a project on car crashes, fatalities, etc. once; the crash
record the police filled out has space for "first object struck" and
"second object struck" but the geniuses only kept the entries for
"first object struck" in the database. well, imagine my surprise when
the most deadly object struck turns out to be the curb (first object
only, of course).