You’re dealing with a car that weighs something like 1,800lbs getting hit by an average vehicle weighing, on average, 4,000lbs.
You’re going to go flying and suffer a lot of damage banging around on the inside.
Would assume you’re only slightly more safe in a SmartCar than a motorcycle.
Top heavy. It screams ‘flip me’
The short wheel base makes them very twitchy. Great for slow tight turns but as the speed increases they become increasingly unstable.
Was that the ‘Field Goal’ or ‘Punt’ model.
If you drive a model car that has never been involved in a fatal accident, let me know the make and model.
Safer than a motorcycle but more dangerous than a Peterbuilt.
The only thing “smart” about a smart car is that they can save your family coffin expenses and bury you in it...
But within a year or so, she got in an accident that left her relearning to use her crushed legs for many painful months.
If she had been driving my wife's Toyota 4Runner, she would have walked away from the crash.
f=m/a
entire length of a Smart (stupid) car is 106 inches. The length of my car is 213 inches with a wheelbase of 119 inches.
One would fit entirely inside my wheelbase and two are still shorter than my car. Probably a fine car for driving on a medieval euro city’s back streets assuming your golf cart is being recharged.
Flipped on its side by hitting the curb, not the hit in back.
The first time I saw a Smart car was in Barcelona in 2002 and I tried to explain it to a friend when I got back to the States. I said, “It looked like two bucket seats and a windshield.”
Everyone should buy their liberal friends a “Smart Car” to save the earth, because your lib friends are smarted than you and they need a car that says
“I’m Smart, I’m Intelligent and gosh darnit I’m better than other people like you”
When they drive it down the road listening to NPR.
It is an investment in our future!
Looking at the pictures it looks like the passenger compartment in the Smart Car was fairly intact. I wonder if the driver had the seat belt on. An airbag doesn’t help much if the vehicle turns over or in a multiple collision(with a car then a pole).
That being said, both drivers are generally better of in a collision between two large cars than a collision between two small cars.
People who drive those things down California highways really bother me.
They travel as fast or faster than I do and weave in and out of traffic.
They are not very stable vehicles.
One data point: I was rear ended in my Ford Fiesta by an F-350 pulling a trailer. It totaled my car and barely marked the truck. The truck push me forward about 10 feet.
The driver, his passenger and I were all OK.
Fiesta curb weight: ~2500
Smart car curb weight: ~1650