Posted on 05/29/2009 10:36:55 AM PDT by Wicket
A study of car safety released on Wednesday shows that four of the top-scoring automobiles in tests of five new models were small cars or so-called super-minis — including the Honda Jazz, Hyundai i20, Kia Soul and Peugeot 3008. . .
Seats installed in the Kia Soul, for example, “achieved a good result in the program’s whiplash testing, again revealing that it is not only larger or expensive cars that achieve impressive results in safety.” . . .
It said the Honda Jazz and Hyundai i20 racked up “impressive pedestrian scores”
(Excerpt) Read more at greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Not many know what happens in a crash, which is why I wrote my short missive. As an engineer, it is an outright insult the crap that is pushed by the media that is provable not true.
I recently had a blowout, at 70 mph, if it were not for my racing years, we may not have survived -- steady as she goes, no sudden brake application, no steering input. Brake only after the speed was way down. The car had all the stability gadgets, but it was really hairy for a few seconds. The wife was petrified ... head to toe. I immediately went to the tire store and bought new top tier tires all around.
If you haven't seen it, Top Gear did some crash testing of these little suicide clown cars and make the same points. Watch until the bitter end.
It looks like automotive safety is the latest area of study to be co-opted by the Eco/Statist agenda. In order to arrive at this result, they had include pedestrian impact, which is not something most people care about when picking a car for safety.
Frankly, I am at the point where I don’t believe anything, anymore. Everybody has a predetermined conclusion, and will manipulate the data however necessary to achieve the desired result. I don’t think it is possible to get an honest answer to such a question as “which car is safest” anymore.
One must just apply one’s own common sense to the question. My common sense tells me that a stable vehicle of substantial mass, thick steel and frame-rail construction, equipped with modern safety features, is the safest choice.
F=MA. It’s the Law!
Commie propaganda....producers of death.
Looks like unplanned parking.
That’s what the Obama cars will bring, for everyone required to drive them.
I had a prof in the 60's who gave several examples of how empirical statistics/evidence can be used to prove just about any point you want to prove.It's all in the massage.
vaudine
Your life experiences are obviously distorting your logic and reasoning skills. You need some re-education in an Acorn camp. Physics and math are tools of the oppressors.
You body is moving at car speed, and it has to be decelerated at survivable rates. And therein lies the problem that is addressed by crumple zones and material deformations. But the deceleration still must be within survivable limits -- That takes distance and area, if you want costs to remain affordable. You cannot remove costs from the equation, less no one would be able to afford the result.
People also have an aversion to "wearing their cars".
Libs don’t believe in the rule of law,
they believe in dictates from elites.
So, all they have to do is ignore F=ma and E = 1/2 m * v^2
and assert their own “justice” on the situation.
Read "How to Lie with Statistics". You can likely do it in an hour or two.
It should be required reading for everyone in High School.
Heck, it's likely published online, I think that it dates back from the 40s or 50s.
I got t-boned in my old Caprice Classic 10 years ago, right in the driver side door- hard enough to dislodge the side view mirror from the passenger side.
Walked away without a scratch, although I was a bit shook up.
I find it hard to believe that I could have walked away just the same in these new minicars. Just doesn’t seem to match up with the laws of physics that one could be equally safe without 2 tons of steel around you.
I was just pointing out that his particular crash may have been survivable, there seems to be some debate of him wearing or not wearing his head restraint as well. However anyone doing 50 or 60 miles an hour in a Smart Car and slams into a wall will be dead, even if there is “no intrusion into the passenger compartment” the deceleration is too quick for a human to survive the impact.
There is a MASSIVE fallacy at work here.
When you test cars against a fixed barrier, you are testing only for collisions with other cars of comparable mass (as well as with fixed barriers).
A head-on between two Kias is essentially the same as One Kia with the proverbial brick wall.
A head-on between two F-150 pickups is essentially the same as One F-150 with the proverbial brick wall.
Fine. But the whole issue is about the relative safety of vehicles of different weights, in the real world where there are a range of vehicles on the road. How does that Kia fare in a head-on with the F-150?
Common sense tells us the answer, even if they get identical fixed-barrier crash-test scores.
And don’t get me started about how they are now touting “pedestrian safety.” I buy based on my family’s safety, not that of a drunk who steps in front of our vehicle. My approach to pedestrian safety is not to hit them. If pedestrians want to take up a collection to subsidize my vehicle for their own benefit, I’ll give it some thought.
I agree. being a car sandwich is of the highest concern ;)
Not sure of their methodology in this one (seems they wanted a result and set up the tests to meet that result... in this case propoganda).
So far as I can tell, in any real world tests, pretty much only 2 smaller cars have done well, the old Saab 9-3’s and the Subarus. Both cars got decent gas mileage, but were significantly heavier than most cars in their class due to the safety and other equipment- and in the Subaru’s case, heavier due to the all wheel drive.
If I am ever struck by one of these vehicles, and I find out about it, I am going to sue.
Probably because you're not. Are you going to believe the statisticians, or your own lying eyes.
Next time you meet someone who got squished in one of those mousetrap cars...ask them if the 10 or 20 bucks a week they saved in gas made it worthwhile.
No doubt a 2,000 lb car, with the same engineering of a 1000 lb car will handle an accident better. However the engineering in say a 1980s Chevy vs a 2009 Chevy is vastly different when it comes to distribution of forces etc.
Cars being shrunk to micro though just don't have enough room to decelerate, no matter how well engineered from impacts fast enough to protect the occupants from death even if the passenger compartment is largely untouched. For people to survive those types of accidents you would need inertial dampeners, and those only exist in the world of science fiction.
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