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ratings
I believe that official test results use a numerical scale,with thresholds for degree of injury,for instance "Head Impact Criteria" HIC and "Side Impact Criteria" SIC.I don't see any of these terms used in the piece.And was a velocity given? A 20-mph head-on impact with a fixed barrier is lethal for an un-restrained driver or occupant where no safety features in the car exist.Col.Stapp survived a 63-G deceleration,going from 632-mph to zero,over 1.4 seconds,equivalent to a head-on collision into a concrete wall and walked away,no doubt sore and black-eyed.Indycar and F-1 drivers slam the walls at over 200-mph,with face-on velocities over 60-mph and survive,driving cars 400-pounds lighter than MetroMpg's Firefly/Metro.I've got numbers from these same folks from actual collisions showing lower injuries in cars sometimes with 33% of the mass of other cars.Maybe not head-on collisions,but injury collisions.A few studies demonstrate that the important criteria for safety are the driver,where mass is distributed in the car,not mass based on "size" of a car.Ledgerdermain hurts evrybody.It hurt with radium.It hurt with thalidomide.It hurt with Heroin,DES,red dye#2,cyclomates,fen-fen,carbontetrachloride,tobacco,PCBs,HFCs,etc..The petro-Nazis should be careful how they twist the debate over CAFE standards,using scare-tactics(always fear-based marketing) to jade fuel-efficient vehicles in the eye of consumers.Getting out of bed is dangerous.Driving incurs risk-taking.
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