Crash tests show small car ratings are misleading
A coworker emailed me this article this morning. IMO its just publicity stunt article. They have one sentence that basically blows the entire article out of the water. Of course, its buried way at the end.
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Yeah, lets test something that accounts for less than 1% of crashes! Good idea. :rolleyes: |
Here's the IIHS news release
From Car accident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Quote:
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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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found in the sidebar of the previously cited IIHS News Release provides more detail. |
You know, I wish some people could somehow manage to wrap their heads around the idea that there are some of us who just don't care all that much about crash safety, especially if that means we all have to drive 6000 lbs SUVs. I've ridden motorcycles most of my life; most of my cars have been sports cars; I've done a lot of bike commuting & recreational riding. Oh, and I back-country ski, climb mountains, fly small planes, play with kayaks & sailboards... Is there ANYTHING in there that would even remotely suggest that automotive crash safety is high on my list of priorities?
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It is not that we don't care about crash safety, it is that we focus on safety in other areas and hope not to crash. AND we don't rely on expensive, heavy, engineered solutions to save us from our stupidity. Note: I am not calling us stupid.
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Another thought...all of this safety gear and design in newer cars (including the perception of weight=safety) doesn't reduce accidents only the survivability of an accident. Imagine what would happen if they spent more time and money to educate drivers (slow down, awareness) and actually reduce the amount of accidents and the severity of these. Address the cause not the symptom.
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The later half of the report had some similar suggestions regarding speed. Quote:
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safety
In the last two weeks I've talked with seven governmental bodies about US energy policy,from local municipal health department,Nobel Prize recipient,IIPC panel member,Phd scientist,and Head of Texas Dept. of Transportation' Sustainability program.None,not one of these people factored,or even thought of factoring the safety of the US military overseas,or civilians in Iran,Iraq,or Afganistan with respect to US reliance (about 70% now) on foreign oil,much of which comes from areas known to be hostile towards the US.---------- Pedantic freaks who can't look beyond the page of a book,who conveniently exist in a total vacuum,oblivious to the outer world,and the victims they create from the microcephalytic cognitive processes manifested in their behavior.No one really cares about safety.It's just a means to inflate car prices and give motorists a bit better peace of mind as they drive to their death.The safety issue has been stood on it's head.Any collision with a closing velocity of 80-mph is gonna get nasty.How about pitting two Hummers in a head-on.And since they're obviously so much safer,let's raise the ante to 160 mph.
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