Small cars rated poorly in new IIHS crash test

So what? Now crash the bigger cars into tanks and 18-wheelers!

The tests should be realistic as possible and this is much more likely to occur than a Smart ForTwo crashing into another Smart ForTwo, as was the case of the previous test.

This is as real as it comes. In USA there's much higher chance of Smart hitting H2 or another oversized SUV.

Here in NYC, I see one or two smarts a day, but at the same time half a dozen SUVs parked on any given block.

It's called denial. It's different for Europe, where you don't have parkways every 5 blocks with SUVs routinely going 40-50mph within a foot from you.

common sense strikes again....

So the IIHS has proven that the laws of physics haven't been repealed. As Mitzo said, you will see similar results if you crash a mid-size car with a Suburban or a Suburban with a commercial truck. In a two vehicle crash the lighter vehicle will always sustain more damage. Common sense.

However, weight is not a advantage in a single vehicle accident. In this case the more a vehicle weighs the more energy the vehicle must absorb. (Force = Mass x Acceleration) So when you crash your car into a bridge or a tree you want as light a vehicle as possible with the largest crumble zone.

In order to improve highway safety we need to try to reduce the weight of all vehicles and try to match size and bumper heights. An "arms race" to see who can have the biggest and heaviest vehicle only puts society as a whole in more danger.

JSH.. i wonder what country you hail from cause you're starting to talk like one of those socialist pinko canadians...

and you're 100% right. crash ratings show you whats going to happen if you try to park your car into a brick wall. the only way you're going to ensure that multivehicle collisions are producing the same results as the single car test ratings is if you mandate that all vehicles weigh within a certain range. let's grab 1.5 tonnes for an example. thats the average weight of a midsized sedan.. and some of the more luxurious compacts (think your speed3, big engined mercs and bmws, A4 with AWD, STis and EVOs, etc etc) and your crossovers and pony/sport cars (excluding the little 2 seaters like MX5... the vast majority of cars weigh about 1400-1600kg.

now.. if you want a big sedan (think 7 series, crown, S class, etc) part of the exuberant price tag is going to go towards high strength yet light weight materials such as all aluminum construction, maybe CF, lots of plastics, etc. its worked pretty well for jag.. top gear loves how nimble the aluminum jags feel, not to mention the huge mileage they tend to get.

if you want an MPV or big off roader, well you're going to have to pony up some good cash as well. sorry guys. going to have to find a more light weight way of compensating for your manhood.

but of course there will be heavy vehicles.. so what do you do? require special licensing to drive these vehicles. yes that means even cube vans, large pickups, etc etc. if you want to go hunting in a 4x4 pickup, you'll get the drivers license just like you got the hunting license. if you work with heavy vehicles, well your typical general license just isnt going to cut it any more is it?

thats the only way you can really assure "safe" roads. I'm sorry, 90% of americans would disagree with that view, but its what you would need to do. on the plus side, the cars that naturally weigh less than that would actually be forced to put on some weight (in the form of stronger construction, bigger engines, AWD, nicer interiors).. which will hurt the mileage a little but what the hell. why not.

and then instead of forcing the CAFE ratings, you can keep sliding the weight requirements from year to year. if it sounds like too much for engineers, let me just say that as an engineer, we love to have more and more design constraints. if you tell an engineer to just go nuts and do what ever they want, they'll run around in circles. i know this first hand.

DavidSilverM3 says
common sense strikes again....


LOL love it good one David

damn laws of physics...

It gets even worse when you realize you just paid upwards of $21K for a fashion statement called the Smart and it can become you coffin in a colission against the legion SUVs out there.

That's an expensive coffin and a more expensive fashion statement.

Unless I misread that stats given by the IIHS the above report is incorrect.
What has happened to basic journalism and research? If you were to go to the web sites for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (.org) or the US Dept of Transportation, you'd see that the actual highway data demonstrates pickup trucks are actually the most dangerous vehicles on the road. With a death rate of 93 or 12 points above a mini passenger car and 31 points above a midsize car. YES, that's right, pickup trucks are the most deadly vehicles on the road.
http://www.iihs.org/research/fatality_facts_2007/occupants.html
Are SUV's safer? - Current data supports that. However, data from 1978 to 2004 shows that occupant deaths per million registered passenger vehicles 1-3 years old were either worse or equivalent for SUV's as compared to passenger cars. Yes, what the data shows is that until 2004 an SUV passanger was as likely to die (or had a higher chance of dieing) in an SUV as a passenger in a regular car. What one sees in a crash lab is one thing. What happens on the road is another.
If you would like to hire me as a reporter, fact checker, or data analyst don't hesitate to e-mail me.

I wonder how much these people get paid to determine that if you slam a small car into a bigger car the smaller more fragile car will sustain more damage...hmmmmmm
I have an idea for an elaborate experiment which might land me a job there as the president.....we may have to go all out and biuld a bigger facility with a lot of testing equipment and computers for a computer analysis and a crew.......here it is.....let's see what happens if we slam a motorcycle into the front of a transport at say 60mph......I am so curious as to which one will fare better....I have my predictions but we do need the OFFICIAL DATA to determine the results.....We can't have room for error using only common sense.......

haha yap. In the last like 10 sec of the video you can see the crash from the angle in slow motion that as soon as it hit, you can see all the energy rushing for the back of the smarth, then no were to go it sends the car flying.