AutoWeek on crash tests

[E-SMART]

Most interesting thing to note here is the sales figure numbers:

Daimler has sold 3476 Smart Fortwos since the vehicle arrived in showrooms in mid-January.

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By HARRY STOFFER, AUTOMOTIVE NEWS




Daimler AG’s tiny Smart Fortwo got decent**but unspectacular**scores in the U.S. government’s crash test program.

In the five-star rating system, the 2008 Smart sedan got four stars for protecting the driver in a frontal impact. It got three stars for the passenger in frontal impact and three stars for resisting a rollover.

In the side-impact test, the car's door came unlatched**causing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to footnote the score with a "safety concern." But the door problem did not subtract from the car's five-star rating for side impact.

Results were made public on Thursday, April 3.

Smart's scores are generally at the upper end of the rating system, but increasingly all vehicles are getting four and five stars in most categories.

This "grade inflation" has prompted NHTSA to undertake an overhaul of the testing and rating program**called the New Car Assessment Program, or NCAP**so that it better differentiates between good and average vehicles.

That plan was announced in January 2007. NHTSA Administrator Nicole Nason has told Automotive News that completion of the program overhaul is one of her priorities before the Bush administration ends next January.

The tests, intended to help consumers choose safer vehicles, are separate from but similar to crashes that are conducted to ensure that a vehicle meets federal safety standards.

In other words, even a poor performer would not “fail” an NCAP test, but it would get a rating of one or two stars.

Smart Fortwo's decent scores may serve to alleviate public concern about the safety of the vehicle on U.S. roads.

Smart sold 1,734 of the microcars in the U.S. in March.

The automaker has sold 3,476 of the vehicles since it arrived in showrooms in mid-January. Smart says 67 retail centers are selling the vehicle now. The company says it has "well over 30,000 net reservations and dealership traffic remains strong."

NHTSA cautions that comparisons of test results across vehicle class and size categories are valid only for side impact and rollover scores.

Comparison of frontal impact scores is valid only for vehicles of similar size and class.

That means the scores do not indicate how a Smart would fare in a head-on collision with a much bigger or heavier vehicle.

[mvukovich]

I read another article by Smart that mention only 2000 people as of March 31 had their cars and they were planning to ship one thousnad more by the end of the 1st quarter. I was surprise at the low number of cars that had been ship to the states so far.

[kwagar]

The numbers so far according to Dave Schembri are 641 deliveries to customers in Jan, 1100 in Feb and 1600 in March for over 3300 by March 31. The number is growing each month and is expected to continue to grow.

[SmartCard]

Originally Posted by E-SMART

"Smart Fortwo's decent scores may serve to alleviate public concern about the safety of the vehicle on U.S. roads. "

It's something how each article puts a different spin on the results!

[Karl Roth]

Originally Posted by SmartCard

It's something how each article puts a different spin on the results!

We see life through the lens of our experience...
karl

[BEAVR]

this same crash test is being touted as how the smart fortwo is worst in its class for passenger safety and how generally unsafe these cars are, and I've seen it posted how safe these cars are in relation to other cars by citing the same results. so is this a safe little car for a daily commute through mostly countryside and the occasional jount with a young child in the other seat or not?

[jonnysan]

Originally Posted by BEAVR

this same crash test is being touted as how the smart fortwo is worst in its class for passenger safety and how generally unsafe these cars are, and I've seen it posted how safe these cars are in relation to other cars by citing the same results. so is this a safe little car for a daily commute through mostly countryside and the occasional jount with a young child in the other seat or not?

If you had your choice of whether you would rather be inside of a WATERMELON or a WALNUT, and it were dropped from waist height to a hard floor, would you rather be inside the watermelon or the walnut?

I'd pick the walnut!

Here, ofcourse, the walnut = the smart car and the watermelon = any other much larger vehicle.....

[stevenvillatoro]

If I have half the car to hit, does that make me twice as safe?

The thing that bugs me about safety studies is that they ignore accident avoidance (not just size, but systems/performance) as part of the equation.

[rawlus®]

i don't think accident avoidance can be passively and objectively quantified which is why it is not incorporated into these tests.

accident avoidance would require not just the vehicle's mechanical ability to perform a maneuver but also the driver's awareness to direct it to do so.

since most drivers are driving completely unaware of their surroundings, on auto-pilot, on the phone, eating a burger... it makes no difference what the vehicle "could" do. that's why the crash tests always assume the driver does nothing. brakes are not slammed on, attempts to steer around the obstruction are not made, etc. it's always a worst-case scenario test.

testing accident avoidance would be a best-case-scenario form of testing. put the best driver in the car and have them put it through it's paces on the skidpad or solo track. that gives you an idea of the vehicle's performance index when piloted by capable hands and feet.

[SmartAzz]

What I find so odd is that these same pubs raising an alarm about the Smart crash test results didn't raise a big stink about the BMW 5 series doing poorly in side impact tests - http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...ct_luxury.html

You'd think a high profile luxury car touted for safety being "the worst performer in side-impact crash tests of luxury sedans", doing worse then a Kia, would have been big news but, correct me if I'm wrong, it didn't merit the attention or spin some of the Smart crash test reporting is garnering. Perhaps the advertising power of BMW played a role...?

PS: Accident avoidance should be factored in (including blind spots, braking and other aspects of the car that make the driver more or less likely to be aware of and able to react to things) but I just don't see them making the effort to include such useful info. In the end it just serves to screw us all with insurance rates that do not really reflect the vehicle (if they did people would pay more to insure old more dangerous trucks, for example).