Small car=Deathtrap? Your opinion?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Air-Hybrid

No one's going to try to deny that, on like-for-like cars, having more safety features will add more weight, are they?

As a matter of fact, I'll argue just that. See for instance the Wenzel & Ross analysis (figure 6) of the increased safety of lighter unibody SUVs over their body-on-frame counterparts, or the analysis (firgure 5) of driver safety in Japanese & German cars versus US & Korean models of the same weight.

It's not a simple matter of more mass increasing safety, even apart from such things as size & handling. It's what the engineers do with the mass that matters. To take an extreme case, do you suppose adding a couple thousand pounds of lead bricks in the trunk would make a car safer? At the other end, we could imagine something like the Ariel Atom, with basically all the weight devoted to a roll cage-like frame (which could be made of titanium & carbon fiber to decrease weight still further). Which would have better crash safety? Or you might consider how many Formula I drivers manage to walk away from spectacular high-speed crashes.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by ProDarwin

My question is, would you argue that doing anything to increase handling/braking abilities worth it? Stickier tires could increase your grip by probably up to .2Gs over your LRR tires.

Better handling, better brakes, and better tyres (even the LRR variety) able to handle this improved performance have made a massive contribution to road safety.
Not just on small cars, but on all cars.

The average car driver is not able to exploit the extra margins that stickier rubber would allow, in order to manoeuvre out of a bad situation.
The most useful performance component of sticky tires is their improved braking ability.

[PaleMelanesian]

I disagree about upgrading brakes. Most standard brake systems are already more powerful than the tire-to-road contact patch. Isn't that why we have ABS, to manage the too-powerful brakes and prevent skidding? Upgraded brakes are useful on a track when you're repeatedly braking and they would otherwise overheat. Most emergency situations require only one braking event.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by ConnClark

well according to this, which is based on deaths per vehicle registered ( which would nullify any arguments that smaller cars have an advantage of avoiding an accident )

I see some very different things in that study of yours.

#1> The death rate is not the rate of accidents ... as such it's rate does not nullify the accident claim... and death or accidents are not the rate of avoided accidents , which are not reported... no one call the police to file a report about the accidents that didn't happen... not that the police would waste their time anyway.

#2> Take a closer look at the data ... the graphs from the study you posted do not make as strong of a case for heavier = safer as you or the study's comments might suggest.

The Graph on page 5 shows that in 1988 the year of the blue line of your graph from page 11 that vehicles 3,500 lbs and over accounted for less than 15% of the total vehicles registered ... yet the graph on page 11 shows for that weight a 100 death rate per million vehicles registered ... for that 15% of the vehicles on the road ... out of every 1 million vehicles on the road ~150,000 of them were those 3,500+ lbs ... and those 150,000 vehicles had 100 deaths.... 150,000/100 = 1,500 vehicles per death.

Compared to the 2,500 pound or less vehicles which showed a 150 death rate per million vehicles registered the same year ... which back on page 5 shows were over 50% of the vehicles on the road at that time ... out of every 1 Million registered vehicles 500,000 of them were 2,500 lbs or less ... and those 500,000 vehicles had a total of 150 deaths ... 500,000/150 = 3,333 vehicles per death.

Not that rate of death is directly related to rate of accidents.... especially avoided accidents which are not reported.

Originally Posted by ConnClark

4) (page 24) We will be ok if we let data on what works –not wishful thinking- guide our strategies.

Yes ... looking carefully at that data for what it is actually showing ... and not trying to make it things it is not ... see above.

[niky]

Size and weight figures never tell the whole story. You also have to look at how this cross-references to buying demographic. Older drivers, younger drivers... cheap drivers who don't want to spend much on safety items like good tires...

I think this note from the NHTSA pdf is telling:

...the fact that, even after controlling for things like driver age and gender, there are important other confounding variables that covarywith size and weight and have their own separate effects on injury risk...

In general, the lack of safety of smaller vehicles is only partially linked to size, but also linked greatly to how well they handle and brake.

Smaller vehicles, in order to be accepted by the American public, need to be cheaper. Which means poorer tires, braking and safety equipment than you would likely see in the European or Japanese market, which are used to buying high content small cars for more money.

Also telling is the graph on collision claim frequencies. Note graph on page 19. Who have the lowest? Large cars and station wagons... bought by older, more mature drivers... and two-door micro-cars, bought by your typical urbanite (often women) and driven slowly. Smaller four-door and two-door cars, driven mostly by young males, have the highest incidences. This will affect average crash speed and chances of death.

Then you have graphs which have a huge variance in driver deaths for certain segments (small SUVs and medium SUVs in the mid-90s), which indicate model specific issues... it's likely the medium SUV variance is due to the Explorer.

A driver death variance of less than fifty deaths per million doesn't tell you all that much unless controlled for demographics, collision speed and model type. And even then, newer small cars are getting much safer, as the data shows. And as stated, as more people embrace smaller cars, they will get much better.

Undoubtedly, very little weight is bad if very little of it is spent on crash structure. But go upscale in price on small cars, and you can get much better crash structures within the same volume and weight thanks to stronger materials (ala SMART or MINI).

[ProDarwin]

Originally Posted by PaleMelanesian

I disagree about upgrading brakes. Most standard brake systems are already more powerful than the tire-to-road contact patch. Isn't that why we have ABS, to manage the too-powerful brakes and prevent skidding? Upgraded brakes are useful on a track when you're repeatedly braking and they would otherwise overheat. Most emergency situations require only one braking event.

Agreed, but if you upgrade the tires to be significantly stickier, upgraded pads would help as well.

[straight5]

Originally Posted by euromodder

The average car driver is not able to exploit the extra margins that stickier rubber would allow, in order to manoeuvre out of a bad situation.
The most useful performance component of sticky tires is their improved braking ability.

I agree - but not totally.
The average driver is not able to exploit the advantages of better tires ect....
but ABS can.
My other point would be that though the driver may not know the limits of the car, they would be less likely to find that limit.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by ProDarwin

Agreed, but if you upgrade the tires to be significantly stickier, upgraded pads would help as well.

A hypermiler should hardly need his brakes

Most of the $h!t that happens on the road, you can see coming from a mile away.


YKYAEM ...
when you sometimes brake harder than necessary to prevent glazing or remove the onset of glazing on your pads.

[gone-ot]

...the weakest component is the TYPICAL drivers' driving-IQ/savvy, ie: pee-poor to none.

[slowmover]

I cannot recall the source, but was interested to read a few years back about the small versus large (data back to mid-90's). For "large" the curve tapers off at 4,000-lbs and 120" of wheelbase (Dodge Charger size).

For all other vehicles, socio-economic data (including level of formal education) was as much a determinant of driver death rates as any other (think young, quite stupid, poor, and drives an older S-10 Chevy pickup versus masters degree, high income and drives a new Mercedes sedan). Hours of driving, road quality (even lighting) all play their part.This was harder to quantify, but was well-presented. Drunk driving data was also shown (not favoring the former group as would be expected). A fatal mistake is usually underlain by bad assumptions and wishful thinking.

Poor, stupid and slightly drunk in a junker mini-truck on dark, badly-maintained roads = bad mojo.

Another point to consider is where driver deaths occur, as in: intersections or with rollovers (which tends to eliminate pickups and SUV's from consideration as "safe").

So a nice light tippy old Jeep Wrangler with a lift kit and offroad tires is just the gift for the step-son you really can't stand.

The last item was in a vehicle sustaining multiple hits. This is where small cars really are deathtraps. Being bounced around and hit repeatedly is what bigger & heavier is better at.

Makes me think that a V6 Charger sedan is a fair choice as nominee, based as it is on the old Mercedes W123 (IIRC).

.