Filed under: Toyota, Green Daily, Lightweight, USA
Small cars can be safe. Just ask Nick Chambers
Worried that the trend towards smaller cars in the United States is going to result in more injuries? It's a rational concern, especially for those who are used to driving in full-size cars, trucks and SUVs and are normally surrounded by two or more tons of metal. But, light weight does not necessarily mean that a car isn't safe. Proving this once again is Nick Chambers, a blogger for Gas 2.0 who inadvertently crashed his little Toyota Yaris into a dirt embankment and rolled it three times. Judging from the pictures, this was a pretty extreme crash, but Chambers walked away with only minor injuries.
Small cars must be engineered properly to retain their safety credentials, but it's not impossible. Remember that all cars go through the same safety testing, regardless of their size. Crumple zones, airbags (you might want to make sure your Yaris has them), anti-lock brakes, stability control and the like all do their jobs and are standard on nearly every car sold in the States. Plus, as many drivers make the switch from big to small in the name of economy, the chances of meeting a nearly immovable object on the highway will only be reduced. Of course, we wouldn't recommend trying it for yourself or anything.
[Source: gas2.0 via Instapundit]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
GoodCheer 2:51PM (10/22/2008)
There must be some new definition of the term "rational". Holding a position due to some gut feeling or intuition -whether in the absence of evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary- it pretty close to the definition of irrational, isn't it?
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Jeremy Korzeniewski 3:46PM (10/22/2008)
It's rational to be concerned about safety. It's irrational to argue that small cars are always less safe.
JK
EVan 3:49PM (10/22/2008)
Smaller cars are less safe than larger cars when involved in car on car collisions. Period.
Momentum equals mass times velocity. More mass => more momentum => more time it takes to slow down => smaller forces on the human occupants of the vehicle.
Trains don't need crumple zones because they weigh so much that they destroy anything they collide with.
The Yaris in this case collided with a stationary object. Had this same Yaris been in a collision with a Ford Excursion heading toward it at the same speed the difference in damage would have been considerable, crumple zones or not.
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Bill 4:34PM (10/22/2008)
EVan, you should have paid attention a little longer in physics class. It is true that momentum is important and it is true that fast deceleration is fatal. But to go on to assume then that Yaris + Excursion = gooners for the Yaris is a bit of a faith based leap. There are many many factors involved including the crimple zones of each vehicle, the relative stiffness of the yaris and relative squishyness of the Excersion. Take for instance this test done where a 5 star (read well designed) small car is crashed into a 15 year old Volvo (read large and once considered the peak of safety).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ygYUYia9I
The small car wins. There is no "period" when thinking about issues as complex as cars colliding. People naturally make poor risk assessments, and without some nice real world testing you are just talking out of your behind. Period.
kballs 9:31PM (10/22/2008)
Not all collisions are small cars + huge suvs.
Common types of collisions on public roads:
-car + pedestrian
-car + stationary object/ground/ditch/tree/wall
-small car + small car
-small car + big car
-big car + big car
-small car + semi
-small car + train
-big car + semi
-big car + train
-pedestrian + train
-pedestrian + semi
-semi + semi
-semi + train
-train + train
2 heavy objects colliding is more dangerous than 2 light objects (because of the amount of crash energy needed to be absorbed/deflected). Semi + semi, or train + train = crater (huge amount of crash energy and essentially zero crumple zone - the whole vehicle folds/peels including passenger areas). The main reason why train + car is so fatal for the car passengers is that the couplers on the front of trains act like big battering rams and spear right through the car door. If the front of trains were wide and flat (even better would be with shocks/springs to absorb energy) it would be more like the car hitting a wall by itself and people would be more likely to survive as the crash energy would be spread across the whole car side.
suv + suv = more dangerous than small car + small car simply because there is more crash energy to absorb. You need crumple zones and air bags + seatbelts, not more mass.
If most of the cars on the road were smaller cars, we'd all be safer than if most of the cars on the road were big suvs because the crumple zones would have less energy to absorb.
Treehugger 11:44PM (10/22/2008)
Those who think that SUV are safer than regular car should look at the statistics of lethality by model and brands. There is small cars who are way safer than most of SUV, Honda civic and Toyota Camry being among the best.
Most of fatalities in car accident are connected to roll-over and as SUV are pretty bad in that regards, on overwhole they are not safer than regular car. In that regards SUV like Range Rover are extremely dangerous.
There is a video on Youtube showing a crash test between a Smart and a big Mercedes, the result is very surprising.
Last but not least SUV are a danger for other cars and cycliste and pedestrian (being too high the driver of these vehicle can't see the cyclist and pedestrian) , so what's the point to increase the safety of the passengers of a vehicle (but you don't with SUV) if you increase the danger for other people around.
If you look to the statistics only the VANs offer a better safety than regular car, but SUV and Pick Up do not, Period.
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Rob O. 9:23AM (10/23/2008)
Actually, after seeing the outcome of severe crashes on smaller cars, I'm convinced that they are far more safe than your average lumbering SUV. It seems - and this is a gut feeling only - that the SUV makers' rationale is that they don't need to work as hard at engineering safety into their vehicles since they've got sheer size and weight working in their favor. Regardless of whether that notion holds true, there's plenty of evidence that SUV's are not, by any means, inherently safer:
http://www.2dolphins.com/2007/10/jumbo-shrimp-and-suv-safety.html
Even aside from the technical viewpoint, SUVs are considerably less safe because of the false sense of security (and superiority) that they tend to impart upon their drivers. This leads to more aggressive, sloppy, and risky driving behaviors - all of which can easily trump even the best vehicle safety engineering.
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drkknight614 9:29AM (10/24/2008)
I wouldn't jump to saying SUV's a safer then small cars. For one, SUV's are big and take a lot of work to drive correctly on the road. Don't forget, safety is more then just how big it is, but also how well it AVOIDs a crash. Yea there are some SUVs that handle as well as cars and sometimes better, but most do not and even so, most drivers have no idea how to really handle an suv. So in most cases instead of trying to dodge an object or swerve outta the way, you basically just hold on to the wheel and slam on the brakes and wait. Not to mention, SUVs take a much longer time to stop. Small cars can stop in a much shorter distance. So when I think of safety, I think about how well the car can potential avoid the crash altogether as well. Because if your in a SUV and you slam on the brakes and that car infront of you is 120ft away....your going to be talking to your insurance company the next minute as long as your not serverly injured. Now if you were in a small car, most have a average stopping distance of around 120ft, you might save yourself from injury, and save some money as well.
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