Smart USA has insisted (while suppling limited info) safety concerns would be easily overcome once the American public learned more about the Smart car. We've concurred with these claims for 7 years and by George we were both right!

The Smart ForTwo is the smallest car ever tested by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and is approximately three feet shorter and 700 pounds lighter than the popular Mini-Cooper and the IIHS agency has classified it as a microcar.

A microcar by definition is an extremely small vehicle, less than 10 feet in length, with less than 85 cubic feet of interior space, an engine size of 1000cc or less, and 2 doors or fewer while seating only a driver and one passenger. In the region of 7,000 Smart cars are driving on American roads since the French-made car went on sale earlier this year.

The Smart has received the highest rating you can get in front and side impact testing, from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety a private group funded by insurance companies.

The Smart car earned "good" the top rating given by the IIHS, for front and side impact protection and earned "acceptable," the second-best rating, in tests for whiplash in a rear impact.

"All things being equal, bigger and heavier is always better," says institute President Adrian Lund. "But among the smallest cars, the engineers of the Smart did their homework and designed a high level of safety into a very small package."

Our very own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tested the car in April and gave the Smart a four star rating for front crashes on the driver's side and three stars for the front passenger. The roll-over rating was also three stars.

Rae Tyson, a NHTSA spokesman, said "Given the amount of attention on smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles in general and this vehicle specifically, we wanted to try to get the vehicle tested and the results out there as quickly as possible."

These test results have been extremely anticipated in the auto industry because of the vehicle's miniature size, the cars buzz and concerns that a driver or passenger would be more vulnerable in a crash.

The NHTSA testing system isn't as strenuous as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's which does its own car crash tests. At times the NHTSA has not even considered its own test results, which were seriously enough to investigation and fail with real-world consumer experience.

Something else we find peculiar is according to NHTSA spokeswoman Karen Aldana “they (NHTSA) waits until vehicles go on sale to the public before evaluating them.” Smart’s been on the road for almost 5 years. Even Nicole Nason the administrator of the NHTSA said she had been installing her children’s car seats incorrectly. However we commend her for her honesty!

However, NHTSA discovered a safety issue in side-impact testing and still gave five stars in side testing because of the ability of the car to protect the driver and passenger from injuries in a crash, even though the driver's-side door opened through the simulation.

In other tests, the Smart Fortwo scored four out of five stars in the front-end crash on the driver's side, on the passenger side; it received three out of five stars and 3 out of 5 stars for rollovers.

A safe motor vehicle by definition is one that affords superior safeguards from injury for all occupants.

The Smart cars being manufactured incorporate safety measures proved to save lives and cause fewer injuries.

They include:

• Enhanced crumple zones
• Three-point seatbelts
• Vehicle Size and Weight
• Better front airbags
• And of course side airbags
• Vehicle Structural Design
• Restraint Systems

The Smart car's Tridion safety cell absorbs the impact energy of the oncoming vehicle or stationary object. Just like our body shelters the heart, the Tridion safety cell protects its precious contents from harm. The steel housing is reinforced with high-strength steel at the strategically important points. The longitudinal and transverse members activate the crumple zone of the other vehicle and distribute the impact energy evenly over the safety cell.