Old Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Video. Seems like a thinly-veiled advertisement for the Big 3's full size barges.
Old Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Video. Seems like a thinly-veiled advertisement for the Big 3's full size barges.
This is great..................all small cars are built to Pinto and Vega standards........I think Volvo would disagree.
They had a Datsun 1200 in the intro.......so I'm good.
In reply to Tom1200 :
I was really hoping they'd show an old Volvo or something crashing into those land yachts. Alas, the closest they came to an import was the Dodge Colt.
They probably could have made those 4800 lb luxo-barges safer by attaching a bulldozer blade to the front.
They could have chosen to present the info with an opposite spin... "Huge cars kill more people in the cars they crash into".
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
Having seen what happens when an F150 broadsides a Miata, there is some truth to it. It's not something you want to witness and it's why my wife usually drives her Suburban instead of the Miata.
A Smart car may not crumple like a Pinto, but physics is the law when you head on an Excursion. The Smart not only stops, it reverses direction, so it sees a disproportionate amount of the force.
Not an Excursion, but an S Class.
In reply to Toyman! :
That's not even an S class. That's a C class. Curb weight 3,527 lbs. The S class of that year would have had another 938 pounds for the Smart to deal with.
In reply to wae :
Talk about reading comprehension fail. It's even written on the damn door. 
These old IIHS vidoes are great. Everytime my dad gets on his high horse about how "cars were better in the 50's" I send him this video.. Sure the old car was a little rusty, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say even non rusty it wouldn't do much better.
SV reX said:They probably could have made those 4800 lb luxo-barges safer by attaching a bulldozer blade to the front.
They could have chosen to present the info with an opposite spin... "Huge cars kill more people in the cars they crash into".
I'd like to see a Chrysler Imperial vs Chrysler Imperial. I suspect that both cars would be driveable, and all occupents dead.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
Things I've said at track days:
"Your bone stock modern sedan is safer than my fully caged vintage race car"
Tom1200 said:In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
Things I've said at track days:
"Your bone stock modern sedan is safer than my fully caged vintage race car"
Probably faster too
I ride motorcycles. Berk off.
So the way I understand it, when 2 vehicles collide head on, each will absorb an equal amount of energy. All other things being equal, the larger vehicle, having more mass, will be able to dissipate that energy over a greater area and thus be safer. Am I wrong?
This topic is always a bit of a sore spot for me. An acquaintance had his daughter die in an accident while in her Smart car. He became full of bitterness and venom, blaming a certain political figure for foisting such cars on the American public.
Unfortunately for all of us the "bigger car is safer based on mass alone" is sort of a false sense of security.
We all drive on the same roads as semi trucks, and the difference between an excursion and a semi (10x) is much more than between an excursion and a Miata (4x).
In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
The key is how they absorb the energy before transmitting it to the passengers.
In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :
I can, and do avoid driving near semi trucks. That's hard to do with large suvs and pickups.
Edit: Don't get me wrong. I love driving death traps like the Samurai and drove a Pinto for years. I just understand what they are and don't mind the risk.
porschenut said:In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
The key is how they absorb the energy before transmitting it to the passengers.
Of course. But I assume that inertia is a linear function. So when a 2500 lb Fiat collides with a 9000 lb Hummer, the mass differential has to favor the GM vehicle. Any engineers in the house?
In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
The momentum is easy to track, energy absorbtion is easy to get as a total, but energy into each vehicle by proportion is tricky. If that fiat and hummer hit head on each doing 30, and they crunch and "stick" (fiat not thrown), then they end up going 17 MPH in the direction the hummer was first going. The hummer slowed from 30 to 17, the fiat slowed from 30 to going 17 backwards. The person in the fiat is going to notice that more than the person in the hummer.
As someone who has literally been on the scene of roughly ~1000 auto crashes back in the day, I'm not worried about it. In the overwhelming number of crashes I've seen, visible injuries are fairly rare, much less substantial injuries or death.
Notable exceptions:
-Motorcycles. Yeah, most of them don't seem to walk away when hit by cars.
-Roll-overs (more common in taller vehicles) lead to legitimate injuries and I've seen a couple deaths.
-Not wearing a seatbelt, I've seen a couple people ejected through the front windshield, causing death.
Majority of people are fine. Excessive speed can surely be a factor, but most accidents result in nothing but property damage or "complaint of injury" (nothing actually visibly hurt).
Just anecdotal evidence based on my own professional experience.
I want the small nimble vehicle I can drive around all the big lumbering trucks.
roninsoldier83 said:-Not wearing a seatbelt, I've seen a couple people ejected through the front windshield, causing death.
In Canada (and likely elsewhere) any claim for accident damage where the subject wasn't wearing a belt will be reduced by contributory negligence -in some provinces it is an automatic 25% right off the top.
I've always driven small agile imported sports cars that would not stand up to a serious collision very well, but the safer alternative would have had me in a Hummer, and I just couldn't take that! In a small sports car, you learn defensive driving quickly
How times have changed. I just heard this morning on NPR that new vehicle sales are only 20% cars, and 80% SUV/Truck/Van. We're buying bigger.
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:So the way I understand it, when 2 vehicles collide head on, each will absorb an equal amount of energy. All other things being equal, the larger vehicle, having more mass, will be able to dissipate that energy over a greater area and thus be safer. Am I wrong?
Sort of. Trying to think of how to word this... Both vehicles introduce their own amount of energy to the equation. That energy gets distributed equally to both vehicles.
Two vehicles of identical weight and speed hitting perfectly head on will both cancel each other out just the same as if they individually hit an immovable wall. If one of those vehicles was stopped, the two vehicles would end the collision traveling at half the speed of the moving vehicle, in the direction that one was traveling.
A car colliding with a bug works the same way. The bug weighs a few grams, the car weighs a million or two grams, and is going faster. The car slows down a bug's worth and the bug accelerates in the other direction a car's worth.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:How times have changed. I just heard this morning on NPR that new vehicle sales are only 20% cars, and 80% SUV/Truck/Van. We're buying bigger.
Who even sells cars anymore? Ford is done with cars except for one halo model. Chevy seems uninterested in selling cars. Honda stopped selling the Fit and I don't even know if they sell the Accord anymore. The only new Civics that I see are CTRs. Etc.
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