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In fairness, the Aveo hatch is easier to watch crashing (Both EuroNCAP). Easier on the eyes in general, in the case of the first-gen hatch. Still, who’s up for tasting some brave manouever Baruth-style in one of these? And no, this isn’t a Euro ringer. This IIHS Aveo test is just as scary. You’re a brave man, Jack.
35 Comments on “What’s Wrong With This Video: At Even Vaguely Legal Highway Speeds Edition...”
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The roof buckling is a sign of catastrophic structural failure of the chassis. I do wonder how the IIHS and EuroNCAP sometimes get very different results when they test the same vehicle. I don’t think all of the differences can be explained by different bumpers and airbags for the different continents.
In all fairness, this rates an “acceptable” from the IIHS, so it could have done much worse. You’ll rarely see the outcome of a crash this severe in the real world.
I was trying to think of something witty to say until I saw how the roof buckled. Now all I can say is daaaaaaaaamn. Even the people at Chery would say “Damn that car folded right up”.
That car may have suffered a slight bit of foot well intrusion! That dummy will be hobbling around for while now.
That blue box wasn’t even moving. Couldn’t they have steered around it?
And it’s only 2500lbs – not like all those porky cars they’re always trying to foist on us. Think about how light and tossable it would be if they took out another 500lbs of airbags, anti-lock brakes, steel, etc.
So the last thing you see after the q-tip in the Buick runs the red light is your head going up your own ass, at least it will be “light and tossable.”
The happy face on the driver’s side airbag was a nice touch, though.
The childs seat in the back was facing forward… but that doesn’t really matter when you’re riding in a motorized pop can. A couple years ago I worked at a crash site for over an hour. One of the cars had a 3 month old baby which had been in the correct car seat, buckled into the back seat, and facing the correct direction (backwards). Unfortunately as I walked up to the car, the baby was laying on the floor in the back and wasn’t moving or crying… it didn’t make it.
And, again, I watch on most any Sunday while cars hit concrete walls and each other at speeds over 150 mph, and the occupants climb out and walk away. Don’t give me the B.S. that we can’t build a safe car, or that it would be prohibitively expensive, or that people wouldn’t buy them. The truth is, the government and the automakers LIKE the status quo.
Wolven:
I’ll buy a lot of conspiracies, but not that.
Government fails to regulate properly when one side of an issue has a strong lobby and the other side is weak and disorganized.
Car buyers are weak and disorganized, but the companies that have to pay out when they get hurt are not.
And that is why there can be a nongovernmental organization like the IIHS, who made one of the videos above, which crashes a large number of cars and shames bad manufacturers.
The insurance lobby does a lot of bad stuff like lobby for impractical speed limits and blindly support speed and red light cameras, but because of it America has the safest cars in the world (yes, Europe, you may have Ford’s Volvo subsidiary and Mercedes, but your masses drive French and Korean death traps, even the awful Aveo comes standard with side curtain airbags in the US).
Unfortunately the US does not have the safest or most skilled drivers.
Damn!
This makes the crash test video of the Ukrainian Chevy/Daewoo Lanos look good!
Meh. Not great, but also not as craptacular as the average YouTube Chinese car.
Also no worse than a last-gen Chevy Venture or F150 which outweigh it nearly 2:1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB0araA0T_k
As fun as it is to watch metal bending, what matters most is the measured force of impact to the head and torso.
This is why I prefer EuroNCAP crash testing. EuroNCAP doesn’t only measure the forces on the dummy, but also notes potentially fatal catastrophic structural failures and deducts points accordingly.
While there’s always the probability (and this is common both in Europe and the US) of manufacturers designing cars specifically to pass crash tests, deducting points for structural collapse that could prove fatal at speeds higher than the test speed is a good way to keep them honest and prevent them from building to a minimum.
“And, again, I watch on most any Sunday while cars hit concrete walls and each other at speeds over 150 mph, and the occupants climb out and walk away. Don’t give me the B.S. that we can’t build a safe car….”
Oh, dear. I’d recommend learning quite a bit more about the sport. For instance…. Did you ever notice the HELMETS those drivers wear, or the HANS safety devices they use, or all of the SAFETY BELTS they strap themselves to the seats with, or the way the SEATS are designed to protect their heads, or the ROLL CAGES built into those cars, or the CARBON FIBER TUBS built around the drivers in open-wheel cars, or the ON-BOARD FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEMS built into the cars, or the fact that most “concrete walls” these days are not “concrete” at all, but are actually SAFER BARRIERS with plenty of “give” to them to soften the blow? And so on?
Yes, we can build amazingly safe race cars. But they have very little resemblence to our everyday road cars. And I’d bet that we’d all be a lot safer if we wore full race helmets every time we got into our cars. “And so on.”
Of course, GM being as clever as usual has a perfectly good design in the same class, namely the five star rated Opel Corsa.
It should be noted that both cars made their debut in the same year (2006), so the Corsa does not enjoy the benefit of being a newer design.
Hmmmm.
“Oh, dear. I’d recommend learning quite a bit more about the sport. For instance…. Did you ever notice the HELMETS those drivers wear, or the HANS safety devices they use, or all of the SAFETY BELTS they strap themselves to the seats with, or the way the SEATS are designed to protect their heads, or the…”
I know all about the helmets, HANS device, etc… I’ve wathced Nascar for over 40 years. But THEY are doing 150… We can’t even survive at 1/3 that speed. And all the blah, blah, blah, about their “special equipment” is exactly why the manufacturers don’t bother. Morons will defend the crap they drive now and make up a million excuses FOR the manufacturer.
no_slushbox :
I’ll buy a lot of conspiracies, but not that.
Government fails to de-regulate properly when one side of an issue has a strong lobby and the other side is weak and disorganized.
Car buyers are weak and disorganized, but greedy insurance companies get to pay out less.
And that is why insurance companies shouldn’t be allowed fund the IIHS unless they give discounts to safer cars.
We’ve let the fox guard the hen house. Sure we want safer roads but the best, cheapest, and logical solution to that is better drivers.
While the Aveo may be a piece of doo, the Koreans will be a force in the car markets in the years to come, they are just getting started.
Here is an story to illustrate.
Those of you who work in corporate America are used to the typical corporate kumbaya slogans that make you feel valued as an employee. Something that says “we value you, loyal employee”.
A friend of mine works in the US for a very large Korean company, and recently went a business trip to the home office.
The slogan, in bold on the wall, translates as
“Do … or Die Trying”
After the Korean War, the country was about as poor and 3rd world as can be. Expect the next 50 years to be pretty impressive too, unless North Korea brings them down.
i didn’t think cars had roof deformation like that anymore, some dont even smash the windscreen
rdeiriar :
“Of course, GM being as clever as usual has a perfectly good design in the same class, namely the five star rated Opel Corsa.”
Saying that it might be worth noting that Corsa is far from GM-engineered. In fact it is just a re-skinned FIAT Grande Punto. And to anyone with a hint of knowledge about European car engineering, the crash test difference comes at no surprise at all.
Did you ever notice the HELMETS those drivers wear
It has been suggested that passangers and drivers should wear light helmets in open roads.
There´s even a car helmet designed for kids.
I must say that until I bought an airbagged car, I wore a ski helmet (like this one) while driving my old no-airbags Renault 25. I asked first to the Guardia Civil (I am Spanish) about the issue. They told me that as long as the helmet did not interfere with my vision and my hearing, it was OK with them.
BTW, the Guardias Civiles wore helmets in their Renault 10s in the 1960s.
marshall :
“The happy face on the driver’s side airbag was a nice touch, though.”
@ 0:12 — Actually, it looks more like Mr. Bill saying Ohhhh Nooooo!
Aveo Sedan: Best driven from the back seat…
There’s probably a minimum size car to properly survive this test, (i.e., Cobalt, Civic, Elantra), as there’s just more crush zone to work with. Cars of this size would need extra engineering and high-strength steel to do well, thus erasing the cost advantage.
Hmm… I think I just solved the Aveo’s ridiculously high MSRP – it would have crushed to the back seat otherwise?
Yet another example of the dangers of poverty. I just got done watching some of the higher end cars in the same test. Maybe not “walk away” but “not dead”.
Scott VanPala: Generally agreed but I come to a bit of a different conclusion. I have no problem with the insurance industry funding the IIHS as long as governments across the country stop requiring drivers to be patrons of the insurance industry. The few (and I didn’t bother to check how many) states I’m aware of that let you drive without insurance force you to pay the state a fee that is set somewhere well above the average annual cost of insurance. I have older vehicles that barely ever get driven but if/when they do I have to have them insured. For the risks I take I’d just as soon do without and take my chances. For my daily drivers I don’t mind so much, but automobile insurance is by and large a government sponsored industry via regulations.
THAT is why I have a problem with the industry funding the IIHS that lobbies the government that feeds it to force us all to continue paying more to save them money.
re:Scott VanPala:
Insurance companies can fund the IIHS, banning them from doing it would raise a lot of Constitutional issues. And the IIHS produces more valuable crash analysis than the US government (NHTSA), including the results of offset barrier crashes.
Insurers generally do give discounts for the things that they’ve lobbied for like airbags, abs, traction control and theft systems.
That said, I’m no defender of the insurance industry. As I said, they lobby hard for uneconomic speed limits, and have been blindly lobbying for red light and speed cameras. Not to mention the lobbying that they do to create “points” structures that maximize insurance premium increases.
Also, they have lobbied for comparative negligence laws that basically allow screw both parties involved in an accident out of the deductible.
And that’s just in the automotive sphere; insurance companies in general have a lot of responsibility for the huge magnification of the financial downturn by credit default swaps. AIG was/is an insurance company.
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/10/25/more-insurance-bailouts-on-the-way/
And the insurers have screwed over a lot of people in Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana by telling people without access to effective counsel that they have flood, not hurricane damage, and used the “flood damage” claims to shift costs to the taxpayers.
http://www.taylor.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=981&Itemid=85
My above comment should not be read any more broadly than “if only because of the strength of the insurance industry there is no conspiracy keeping cars in the US less safe than reasonably possible.”
@no_slushbox: America has the safest cars in the world
The data do not support this oft-repeated canard. Parrot it as many times as you want, it still won’t be true. One of the basic problems with the statement is that it conflates crashworthiness — and only crashworthiness — with “safety”. Crashworthiness is only one of the main categories of vehicle safety. There’s also crash-avoidance, postcrash survivability, pedestrian protection, and a few others. American-market cars do not excel in all or even most of those categories. Certainly driver safety performance is a key factor in overall roadway safety, but “America has the safest cars in the world” is just not supportable if we use honest definitions and terms.
there is no conspiracy keeping cars in the US less safe than reasonably possible
There’s no conspiracy, as such, but the U.S. market is demonstrably configured so as to prevent or greatly slow the adoption of great advances in crash-avoidance and pedestrian protection that have already been made in other markets, and there are too many regulatory blind alleys — viz the latest roof-crush standard, which viewed in unrealistic isolation might be a fine idea, but which in the context of reality can be predicted to worsen crash-avoidance performance of vehicles.
American regulators have (like you, as it seems) long focused almost exclusively on crashworthiness and postcrash survivability, assuming that a crash is going to happen and spending little time on crash avoidance. That was probably an appropriate standpoint from which to start tackling the problem of auto safety back when the idea of doing so gained traction in the mid-1960s, but other countries have taken a more balanced approach to all aspects of vehicle safety. Partially as a result, the U.S. is discouragingly far down the ranked lists of countries by safety performance in terms of death rates per vehicle-distance travelled and per vehicle registered.
Most of the countries doing better than America are places where “the masses drive French and Korean death traps” (your not-very-supportable words).
I agree with you that the IIHS offset-barrier crash tests are a good deal more realistic than NHTSA’s frontal-barrier tests, but that to me doesn’t warrant a paean to the insurance industry so much as it underscores the many problems with NHTSA’s regulatory approach.
America has the safest cars in the world
Are you sure?
http://www.euroncap.com/tests/chrysler.aspx
http://www.euroncap.com/tests/chevrolet.aspx
http://www.euroncap.com/tests/jeep.aspx
Before we start calling for nuclear-blast-proof cars for every human being on the planet regardless of affordability, let us remember that a $2 bus ride is safer than an $80,000 Mercedes.
As for the bent roof on the Daewoo in the video above, well, I’d take that over a bicycle any day.
What’s wrong? no side window!
Daniel J. Stern:
What are other countries doing to encourage active safety?
The US is mandating stability control (and by default ABS) in 2012, before any other country that I know of.
If the cars in other countries have better active safety it is only because gas taxes (which I strongly advocate) keep them light and nimble, not because the governments have done anything to actively encourage it.
The French have progressed a lot, but there are Korean cars (the Koreans can make great cars, I’m looking at the Genesis coupe), and cars from less developed countries, on sale in Europe that could never meet US crash standards.
What are other countries doing to encourage active safety?
Careful with that term “active safety” — it’s ambiguous. We’ll agree for the moment it means what you meant. ESC shows terrific promise, and it may well improve roadway safety, but heed the object lesson of ABS, which showed similarly terrific promise: the real-world safety benefit of ABS has been disappointingly statistically marginal. Unfortunately, reality has a habit of poking ugly holes in beautiful theories.
While we’re still building padded cells on wheels, Europe and Japan are vigourously engaged in developing and deploying V2I and V2V comms protocols to make vehicles and their drivers aware of road conditions and hazards on a dynamic basis, so that those (increasingly ADAS-equipped) vehicles and their drivers can avoid needing to rely on ESC or ABS in the first place. Also: pedestrian protection requirements, expected to save a great many pedestrians’ lives and limbs, are aggressively being phased into European regulations. America hasn’t even begun to mock this yet, let alone look at it seriously. A dead pedestrian is just as dead as a dead vehicle occupant, so this counts.
Again: this is a philosophical difference between America and Europe. Americans tend to legislate vehicular safety based on the first premise that a crash is inevitable. Europeans tend to legislate vehicular safety based on the first premise that the best crash is the one that does not happen: First try to prevent the crash, then try to mitigate its consequences if it does happen.
Which way’s better? That’s a very complicated question, and it cannot be answered with simplistic assertions like “America has the safest cars in the world because ESC will soon be mandatory”. The one doesn’t follow from the other. Results, as linked above, might suggest the European approach may give better overall results (because all but one of the countries doing better than the U.S. use European vehicle regs, not the U.S. regs). Another potentially valid interpretation of the data is that it doesn’t matter because drivers are the more influential factor (because there are countries with Euro-reg cars doing better and doing worse than the U.S.). But the data simply do not support the notion that American-market cars are the safest in the world. Whether they’re less safe by dint of American regulations or less safe by dint of American driving realities is not especially interesting or relevant; the success of a regulatory strategy must be measured by its actual efficacy in the system to which it is applied.
If the cars in other countries have better active safety it is only because gas taxes
Incorrect. There are numerous ways in which European regs are substantially more thorough than U.S. regs in crash-avoidance (what you’re somewhat inaccurately calling “active safety”). Brakes, lights, tires, etc.
The French have progressed a lot
Everyone has progressed a lot. Your remarks about “French death traps” seem based more on an animus against the French than on any objective facts.
there are (…) cars (…) on sale in Europe that could never meet US crash standards
True. And there are cars on sale in the US that don’t meet European standards, or do very poorly in European crash tests.
Daniel J. Stern:
Active safety is anything that helps people avoid accidents (abs, good tires, radar cruise control, etc.) and passive safety is anything that helps people survive them.
These are well recognized definitions, there is no ambiguity, other than that which you are creating.
Also, that’s very dishonest (not surprising given your dishonesty about the “ambiguity” above) of you to claim that the US “is discouragingly far down” on the list of deaths per billion vehicle kilometers travelled.
The country with the lowest rate, Britain, is at 7.5 deaths per billion KM (the only country under 8), while the US is at 9.4 deaths per billion KM. Germany is at 11.1, Japan is at 12.7, France is at 13.6 deaths per billion KM (a 45 percent higher death rate than the US), and Belgium is at 16.3.
http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/m/data/USrank.htm
In my first comment I acknowledged that the US definitely does not have the best drivers, and it would be nice if every US market car had rear amber turn signals and fog lights, but, for people to ride in, the US market has the safest cars in the world.
That the US has such a low death rate per billion KM travelled (within 2 of the best country), despite poorly trained drivers, bad roads, and more rural roads, only proves that.
Which only goes to my original point; there is no conspiracy between the US government and automakers to keep cars unsafe, despite the fact that people sometimes survive high speed NASCAR and F1 crashes.
“there is no conspiracy between the US government and automakers to keep cars unsafe, despite the fact that people sometimes survive high speed NASCAR and F1 crashes.”
Sometimes? SOMETIMES?? Are you F#$%& kidding me? Or just purposely being obtuse…
Let’s take the ratio of deaths (or even serious injury) per accident in Nascar (since they are the closest in size and weight to street cars) and compare that to the ratio of deaths per accident where the speed was over 50 mph.
If it’s not a “conspiracy” to keep street cars unsafe when it’s blatantly apparent that they CAN be made QUITE safe at highway speeds, what do you attribute the amazingly coincidental lack of any truly safe street cars to?
Increased driver training is probably the area where the US can most improve its traffic accident/fatality rate, but it won’t be cheap or simple to implement.
Effective driver training is expensive, but many of its benefits will last a lifetime. Some of the more perishable skills (skid control, throttle steer, emergency braking and collision avoidance) will fade quickly on suburban streets, but stability control technology makes these situations much more survivable for drivers of ordinary skill.
If the US will never go in for full Euro-style training and licensing (and I doubt we will), I think that graduated licenses for new drivers are a tentative step in the right direction. Combine them with annual testing for all drivers over 70 (to gently cull out the legally blind blue-hairs) and we’d all be safer.
@no_slushbox:
Active safety is anything that helps people avoid accidents and passive safety is anything that helps people survive them.
That’s one set of definitions in common use. Another, also valid and in common use, has “active safety” referring to those devices and systems — such as manual seat belts — that require the vehicle occupant’s involvement in order to function, while “passive safety” refers to those devices and systems — such as air bags or automatic seat belts — which do not require the vehicle occupant’s involvement. Still another valid and common set of definitions centres around the nature of the device or system itself, as for example an active head restraint (which moves by itself in the early stages of a crash to an optimal position to protect the occupant).
That direct ambiguity is why the definitions you seem to favour are not generally favoured by those who study these matters. Rather, the unambiguous terms crash avoidance, crashworthiness, and postcrash survivability have currency. They mean exactly what they look like they mean, and nothing else. You’re certainly entitled to your preferences and guesses, and I suppose you’re welcome to think the precise definitions are stupid or whatever, but that does not change their existence and preference amongst traffic safety professionals, nor does it make me somehow “dishonest” for pointing them out to you.
The country with the lowest rate, Britain, is at 7.5 deaths per billion KM
Yep. And guess what? They use the Euro vehicle regs, not the U.S. regs.
the US is at 9.4 deaths per billion KM. Germany is at 11.1, Japan is at 12.7, France is at 13.6 deaths per billion KM (a 45 percent higher death rate than the US), and Belgium is at 16.3.
http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/m/data/USrank.htm
Indeed. Those countries are all worse than the U.S. No debate there. And there are nine countries doing better than the U.S. Eight of them require Euro-reg cars. If American-market cars were the safest in the world, as you claim, it’s reasonable to expect the U.S. would be higher (better) on the ranked list. Canada provides an ad-hoc control for driver factors, since U.S. and Canadian vehicle regs and road conditions are substantially identical (remember, the vast majority of Canadians live within 200km of the U.S. border) but compared to Americans’, Canadians’ behavioural patterns and cultural norms are considerably more European; witness the present and historical seatbelt-usage figures for the two countries. Canada is higher (better) on the ranked list, which confirms the point we agree on — that driver factors are a key influence on roadway safety — but Canada is also not at the top (best position) of the list. However, it’s interesting to see that Canada’s rate is identical to that of Australia; Canada uses American-spec vehicles, while Australia uses Euro-spec vehicles. The roadway geometry and diversity of driving conditions is much more comparable between North America and Australia than between North America and Europe, so that particular equality of death rate suggests American-spec cars do not necessarily give better safety performance than rest-of-world (Euro-reg) cars.
for people to ride in, the US market has the safest cars in the world.
So you keep saying, without any support for the asertion. Repeating it doesn’t constitute support.
That the US has such a low death rate per billion KM travelled (within 2 of the best country)
There is indeed a relatively narrow spread of safety performance results among the top ten countries, but that’s not particularly germane to the discussion except to undermine your insistence that American-spec cars are substantially safer than rest-of-world cars.
V6 :
July 7th, 2009 at 3:18 am
i didn’t think cars had roof deformation like that anymore, some dont even smash the windscreen
Just take a look at the fairly recent F-150 from 1997-2004 (10th gen). It’s not like Ford didn’t do computer modeling and know what the crash worthiness of this thing was. Once again, Ford proves their lack of integrity in selling something that it knew was less than safe. This thing folded like a cheap tent.
And people think that they are safe in their big ol’ trucks. It depends, doesn’t it, on which one we’re talking about.
Pathetic crash test here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB0araA0T_k
“And people think that they are safe in their big ol’ trucks.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvfaD85NO-Y&feature=related
Yeah, I’d MUCH rather be in this than the popcan that this thread was about… or any other 4 banger Toylet.