News
October 2009
The Laws of Physics Prevail!
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently released a report evaluating the crashworthiness of micro cars subjected to collisions with mid-sized sedans. As suspected, micro cars with good crash test ratings (Smart Fortwo, Honda Fit, and Toyota Yaris) all performed poorly in the car-to-car crash tests. The testing validates what collision reconstructionists, engineers, and physicists have known for a very long time; vehicle mass and size are crucial to protecting occupants in crashes. Lighter vehicles are subject to greater collision severities than their heavier collision partners and tend to have very small crumple zones, which can lead to high occupant accelerations and injuries.
Vehicle safety ratings can be misleading. Barrier crash tests simulate collisions with other vehicles of similar mass. The damage a vehicle sustains in a fixed barrier collision is the same as the damage it would sustain if it struck an identical vehicle travelling towards it at the same speed. Crash test ratings are a great consumer tool for comparing the crashworthiness of vehicles in a similar class, but one must be careful not to assume that a small vehicle with a 5-star safety rating would offer greater protection than a mid-sized vehicle with a 4-star rating. Of course, there are tradeoffs with heavier and larger vehicles such as fuel economy, manoeuvrability, and cost. Consumers must educate themselves and prioritize the features they are looking for in a vehicle.
Canada updates its child safety seat regulations, includes better alignment with the U.S.
