Quote:
Originally Posted by minispeed
You bring up the point of pedestrian safety and it reminds me of the UK laws around that, a lot of that design is starting to trickle into other markets because it's easier than making 2 different front ends for the cars. If you open your hood and think "wow that engine is really low in there, there's a lot of space above it" That's probably because of the UK pedestrian impact laws, same reason Jag doesn't have the leaper anymore, and I think it was rolls that has designed a motor that will pull theirs down when it senses an impact.
|
I think that most of vehicles sold here have now flexible hood with some space below it because of those EU directives.
Here EU is bit like USA and different countries like UK are like states of USA in your place, still different but constantly moving more towards similar model.
So we have idea that if some vehicles is road legal in one eu country it should be legal in other countries, which in turn makes all those thing EU wide.
Euro NCAP here is which tests vehicles for crash safety, it might be interesting to compare result of our different systems, so here is link to VW Passat test results from 2010:
VW Passat | Euro NCAP - For safer cars crash test safety rating
Passat is quite large car here, don't know from that listing if there is any typical american market vehicle, but there is Jeep Compass which is SUV and which I read some car buyers consider safer as it is bigger or at least SUV.
Jeep Compass | Euro NCAP - For safer cars crash test safety rating
For me that looks like to be rather crap when compared to VW, but I would like to compare more similar cars, to understand better if safety indeed is total bull as reason for not having more economical cars there at US market.
Maybe you can spot some typical vehicle from list and compare to your traffic department's test results?
Passat 1.6D emissions, only CO2 seem to be mentioned as here nothing else seems to matter these days, but that is 113 grams for single kilometer and as CO2 is directly dependent from consumed fuel I doubt that that emission would be reason for not being sold there, maybe it would be possible to find out what emission is too much and how much it is and then compare to some other car that is allowed to market and there one could see if even that is reason or if poor emission measuring is reason, there it would be then easier to push things forward.