What is a safe car? A car that prevents a crash, a car that protects the car's passengers, or something else? Safety testing groups around the world have their own, varying definitions. Euro-NCAP (the European benchmarking organization, or New Car Assessment Program), has decided it needs a new standard which will integrate several safety factors. I spoke with Cordelia Wilson of Euro-NCAP: "Consumers have told us they find the present system of star ratings which differentiates according to adult passenger crash protection, child passenger protection and pedestrian protection, confusing. A modern SUV will often get five stars at adult protection and one star at pedestrian protection, but how good is it in sum? So starting in 2009, we intend to introduce a fairer, clearer system which rates overall safety performance". Will car makers continue to advertise with excellent results in selected areas, but conveniently forget to mention when they score dismal results in others? "We won't use stars anymore. Instead, you can expect a percentage rating which will integrate adult safety, child safety, pedestrian protection, and 'safety assist', meaning electronic devices such as ESP". SUV makers are said to be horrified, since while perceived safety is a strong SUV selling point, they are normally lousy at pedestrian protection. Let me guess: Honda is happy about these changes in the benchmarking rules, while BMW and Land Rover are having a fit? "You said that, not me".
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I can only applaud.
We DO live in a society, believe it or not, and the idea of buying a vehicle such as an SUV that is marginally better at protecting its occupant at the expense of everyone else is just as selfish as me going around and punching people I don’t like, just because.
It won’t prevent said behavior, but at least it’ll put it under the spotlight.
I remember canceling my subscription to Fortune after its car reviewer complained that car designs (of luxury cars especially) were modified to improve pedestrian safety. In her mind, having a nicer car trumped increasing pedestrian survival chances. Riiight.
What safety features help pedestrians?
“What safety features help pedestrians?”
Ummmm… A transmission that can’t be shifted outta Park?
toxicroach :
What safety features help pedestrians?
I think a lot of it is in the design of the fron of the car. Does the pedestrian end up on the hood or under the wheels.
Those aftermarket deer impact railings are a nice touch. They just kill the pedestrian outright.
taxicroach: thanks for asking. For a lengthy answer, click here:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/the-truth-about-europes-pedestrian-safety-legislation/
@toxicroach: A low front fascia, no bull bars, enough clearance between hood and engine block, active hood systems etc. etc…
@toxicroach
What safety features help pedestrians?
Under-hood airbags, lots of air betwen the hood and hard partls like the engine, soft front ends, not to high and not too low to fall comfortably on…
Active Hood Systems?
So like, what, you land on the hood and the hood pops up and sends you flying over the car?
AG,
That would be entirely too much fun! Just imagine the fun Jack Ass would have with that.
Some sort of telemetry system, like the MBenz Distronic+, scaled so it can intervene on behalf of the careless staggering drunk pedestrian that enters the roadway might be the solution.
If this proposal grows legs (of an EU-mandated length and girth with SPF 50 applied), I would rate Continental AG a strong buy.
toxicroach wrote:
“What safety features help pedestrians?”
It seems as if most the vehicles that run over toddlers when backing up are minivans and SUVs.
One safety feature would be good rear visibility.
Another, to protect the drivers of other vehicles, would be having equal bumper height. Another would be being narrow enough and nimble enough to move out of the way in a crowded city.
Shorter hoods with better driver visibility and knowledge of the vehicles dimensions would help avoid driving onto sidewalks and over curbs.
Lower total hight allows drivers of other vehicles to see traffic conditions ahead and to the side of another vehicle.
All in all, the SUV is totally unnessary for most people and is basically a threat to the rest of the world.
Thanks for answering.
My militant cyclist friends accuse all car-driving-SUV-haters of projection.
Okay, so you are buying a car. Do you now give a crap about the NCAP rating?
Pedestrian impact standards are the new new thing. I think it’s best served as a standard that must be met.
The car buyer is not served by having the information he really wants (on his own passengers’ crash protection) mixed into what is realistically a secondary concern (crash liability).
All NCAP is going to manage with this is to make most people not care about the overall rating, and possibly have their ability to influence the market reduced when a competitive group sees this as an opportunity to take over as the lab of choice by the market place.
Also, anyone know off hand the number of lives saved by the new tech in pedestrian crash safety?
Is this a real issue, or more like stranger fear?
Landcrusher: yes, people give a crap about NCAP ratings. There are numerous examples of cars that were changed or prematurely discontinued after getting bad ratings. People who do not visit car websites on a daily basis prefer simple ratings. It may be regrettable that it is so, but alas we live in an imperfect world.
I can understand the point of your second argument, whereas safety data should not be mixed. But it already is — no NCAP organisation splits its testing results into head protection, thorax protection, old people’s protection, etc.
And I much prefer Euro-NCAP’s concept of “overall safety performance”, because it ends shortcuts and misleading advertising, and takes externalities into account. As AKM wrote, we do live in a society.
LC: NUMBER of lives saved? That wouldn’t be a very helpful number. As you pointed out, this technology is NEW new. You need to wait a few years.
A better figure would be how much less damage a particular car with impact mitigation technology will do to a pedestrian. This one’s easy to find: obtain a wired crash test dummy, hit it with your test cars, find out how likely it is that your dummy died horribly, as compared to other cars. Easy data!
According to truTV last night, a pedestrian is killed by a car every five hours in the US. Seems compelling enough to me. And what exactly is the cost to society? So why the hell NOT?
As for not giving the car-buyer the information he REALLY wants: wow. I think YOU overestimate the number of people who are so indifferent to the lives of strangers that they’re not even willing to consider the data. If given the choice between “be safe, and keep others safe” and “be safe, but maybe wipe out a Cavalier full of teenagers,” do you really think the average person would pick the second one? I don’t think I’ve EVER met anyone for whom personal safety is their -ONLY- concern. Unless you’re volunteering for that dubious distinction.
I base this on the many people for whom I’ve talked out of buying Yukons and Rams – when I start talking about hoodlines and cabin penetration, they shy away. It’s not malice or indifference, just ignorance, because all they saw were the star ratings, and didn’t think about it. NCAP’s one number would solve that problem.
In any case, regarding NCAP’s alleged inevitable irrelevance…what exactly is the alternative? I don’t think we can expect them to cheerfully award five stars to a vehicle they know will end up two feet inside the passenger cabin of anything smaller than a Buick. Beyond that, I ask again: what is the cost? Why NOT?
As in most cases, simplifying data provides an unrealistic picture. There IS no one number that’s going to provide everything you want to know about a car you’re buying…so, as a car person, you’re free to do all the digging you like to uncover whatever information you need.
But as a reponsible institution providing crash data, if they’re only going to give one number, I completely understand why this is the method they’re picking.
Martin,
Most drivers think they will never hit a pedestrian unless it’s the pedestrian’s fault. It can happen to any of us, but
You may be right that most buyers will swallow the new stat without realizing it’s component parts. You are certainly right about the ad’s which they already eat whole without apparently realizing how misleading the claims are.
Still, my experience tells me over time that people will actually gravitate towards rational, informed, self interest. They do this even without realizing it. Therefore, I foresee this rating becoming less influential over time.
JM,
This stuff isn’t THAT new. Aren’t the new Camry and Accord designs influenced by new regs for this?
Besides, we can always use the total possible lives saved. According to your 5 hour number, I think that works out to 1752 fatalities per year.
So what’s the cost to society? 1752 lives.
Now, how much time and money do we spend per year trying to save 1752 lives and still call it a wise investment? If you believe that pollution shortens lives, do you accept a possible trade off of 2000 cancer victims for 1752 pedestrian saves? I don’t have the answer, but I can tell you that not asking the question has become de riguer in modern decision making. THAT will kill off the human race if we don’t stop it.
AKM :
“We DO live in a society, believe it or not, and the idea of buying a vehicle such as an SUV that is marginally better at protecting its occupant at the expense of everyone else is just as selfish as me going around and punching people I don’t like, just because.”
So, according to your logic, I am supposed to buy a less protective vehicle for my family, just because YOU don’t like that my choice of vehicle may not be as “Pedestrian-friendly” as you think it ought? Just asking….
Really, this whole era of PC, freedom-hating liberalism and litigious vehicle-hating is getting out of hand. Do they design train locomotives to maximize pedestrian safety, or is it logical to infer that anyone stupid enough to walk carelessly on railroad tracks deserves what they get?
Just as nobody sets out to drive in such a way as to intentionally hurt pedestrians (other than in some moronic video games I’ve seen), car makers don’t set out to make their cars dangerous to pedestrians, either. I absolutely concede that since drivers and pedestrians share the same space, drivers owe high levels of reasonable caution when driving in areas prone to pedestrian traffic. But pedestrians share the responsibility to be alert, not put themselves in harms way or walk carelessly (I’m looking at YOU, all you Mensa candidates who walk while texting, cel-phoning, etc. ad nauseum.)
We live in an era when much vehicle cost is already legislated into the purchase of a new vehicle. Do not deign to tell me, or have the government tell me, that any vehicle I now choose to purchase MUST now have certain types of pedestrian safety features (at the compromise of making passengers less safe), or not exceed certain size, shape or weight configurations. (Yes, I know NO ONE is CURRENTLY proposing mandating these features, but that is where we are heading.)
Please don’t get me wrong. I am not against insurance companies working with the OEM’s to help design cars that are safer for pedestrians. Just don’t make it MANDATORY, thus driving up the cost of all vehicles. And don’t compromise MY safety as a driver or passenger in a vehicle I choose to buy by doing so. And by all means DON’T impugn me as selfish and careless about the welfare of others just because of my vehicle choice (2002 Mitsu Montero, thank you and your welcome. I live in the snowbelt.) You don’t know me at all. I might be a perfectly nice person, not selfish at all.
Let the market decide.
BTW, I walk with my dogs approximately a mile per day, frequently with my five year old grandson with me, on suburban roads near traffic without sidewalks. I train him very well in the safe practices of walking, and the rules of the road, and to watch out for drivers who might not be watching out for him. If more people would do the same with their kids, we wouldn’t need the NANNY state to protect us poor, simpleton people from having to learn how to walk safely, with common sense, aroung roads and traffic.
Didn’t mean to get off on a rant here, but sometimes, the chutzpah and smug temerity of people who feel it is their born duty to tell people how to live their life, what they can and can’t buy and how to protect their own families, compels me to hurl the occasional invective.
Think this is a flame? You should have seen it before I cleaned it up….
Mark MacInnis: “Let the market decide.”
The problem is that “let the market decide” leads to each consumer buying the safest and most convenient vehicle for them. Unfortunately, many of these safety features are very small improvements that have drastic downsides for everyone else. In the end, when everyone decides for themselves we have overall less safety and very high costs.
In the USA, laws concerning bumper height, headlight heigh, headlight brightness, weight, rear window transparency, etc. all follow a common sense approach that improves safety for everyone. Unfortunately, these laws were not upgraded to fully include light trucks. There are plenty of basic safety design requirements that light-trucks could incorporate for little cost if the vehicles were designed with the requirements in mind in the first place. Cars have been following the safety rules for decades; it’s time for the light-trucks to do the same.
Consider the headlight height of many light-trucks. It is way higher than the legal limit of cars here in California (and I’ll bet the USA as a whole). Those high light-truck headlights are a major distraction for people in cars. Many of those trucks also have extra lights lower down–near or under the bumper. If the vehicle design were changed so that the normal headlights were the low ones and the high lights were only used for offroading (or whatever they were supposedly designed to be so high for), everyone in cars would be a lot better off.
How could anyone possibly justify the huge chrome “brush guards” on a vehicle driven around town? They are removable, so just put them on when you are about to go off road. They might make no difference in a high-speed accident, but they sure do unnecessary damage in parking lot situations. Those sharp blades make a mockery of car bumper regulation and make a really nasty dent/scrape/puncture in car hoods with just the slightest mistake during parallel parking. Sure, the owner of the truck might pay higher insurance premium for dangerous designs; in the case of the blades and/or high bumpers, though, it’s been my personal experience (twice) that the truck driver goes uncaught, a classic high-and-run.
Mark MacInnis: this news item is about benchmarking, not about regulation. It’s about giving consumers information so that they can make a rational decision. So in this case I can agree with you 100% that the market should decide.
Nobody is saying you should buy a less protective vehicle for your family. There is no trade-off, unless you want to drive an Abrams tank. Looking at the Euro-NCAP charts and statistics, you see that the only cars that do better-than-miserable on pedestrian protection are those that are excellent in passenger protection.
The future is bright; the Luddites were wrong.
Martin Schwoerer and SunnyvaleCA
Respect your opinions. My right to disagree, in part. Go back and reread AKM’s posting. He is the one alleging that all who by SUV’s do so out of selfishness and disregard for pedestrian safety. To that, I take exception.
Rational markets presume that customers, given choices, will make rational decisions in their own best economic self-interest. I would presume the application of this would be a market of three hypothetical vehicles were available and in all respects save three (cost, passenger safety (ps) and pedestrian safety factor (psf)) equivalent. Posit one vehicle as +1 (favorable) in cost and -1 in psf and +1 ps. Second vehicle, -1 (higher) in cost, but +1 psf and +1 ps. The third vehicle is -1 (again, higher) in cost, but -1 in ps but +1 in psf.
A “rational’ consumer would most likely purchase vehicle 1….least cost and higher passenger safety will be his most importion criteria. An altruist may decide to incur the additional cost for vehicle 2….but that is his right of free choice in a free market. Vehicle three is clearly a less than rational choice, other things being equal.
Clearly, vehicle purchase decisions are not as simple as the above illustration; many other factors influence the decision, compared vehicle choices are seldom equal in other respects.
My points are simply these: 1. AKM made a blantant and arbitrary blanket generalization about his perception of SUV buyers and their apparent-to-him lack of concern for the safety of others in our society. And two, let the consumer and the market decide in an educated, rational fashion sans the interference of government mandate and condescending, elitist, snobbery (if the shoe fits, AKM.)
Buy the way Mssr. Schwoerer. As a free-market capitalist, one can hardly be termed a “Luddite” Luddites abhor change. I simply abhor change that doesn’t occur naturally as part of market adjustments. Call me laissez-faire, but don’t call me a Luddite….or late to dinner either, for that matter.
Ultimately, I contend that the degree of safety and level of attention paid to the task at hand by both drivers and pedestrians is of far more import to overall pedestrian safety than whatever vehicle choice I make.
One last thing: Sunnyvale: I grok your comments on headlight hight…agree it can be an annoying distraction. Ummmm. What is the connection to the original line of discussion….PEDESTRIAN safety?
“Rational markets presume that customers, given choices, will make rational decisions in their own best economic self-interest”
But we are talking about the car market. If people made rational choices based on economic self interest the vehicle mix on our roads would look very different. I know many Americans are opposed to regulation that restricts personal freedom in favor of the common good on philisophical grounds but most Europeans evidently aren’t.
“I contend that the degree of safety and level of attention paid to the task at hand by both drivers and pedestrians is of far more import to overall pedestrian safety than whatever vehicle choice I make.”
You are correct but these regulations aren’t designed to prevent accidents but to make the accidents that do occur more survivable.
Really, this whole era of PC, freedom-hating liberalism and litigious vehicle-hating is getting out of hand.
No, we liberals don’t hate vehicles. We don’t want our vehicles to take over our lives or put us in wheelchairs (now that would be taking away someone’s freedom).
Liberal: 1. favoring progress or reform, 2. free from prejudice, tolerant, 3. characterized by generosity. “Random House Webster’s Dictionary”.