The IIHS’s latest bid for relevance comes in the form of an entirely unshocking revelation: crash a car and an small SUV together, and the car will be more expensive to repair. I know, I know… mind-blowing stuff. And it would be goofy enough if the IIHS had performed these crash tests simply for the data, but in fact the results gave them cause to exhume one of the most asinine crusades in the history of automotive regulation: regulating bumper height. Because, as the IIHS’s Joe Nolan puts it
We picked vehicles from the same manufacturer because we think automakers should at the least pay attention to bumper compatibility across their own fleets. The results show that many don’t.
And why not? Well, maybe because the odds of hitting a vehicle made by the same manufacturer that made your car are so astronomically unlikely that testing “bumper compatibility” let alone calling automakers to task for not paying enough attention to this meaningless metric is the height of self-important stupidity. But of course the IIHS wasn’t going to just leave things there…
Yes, not only should automakers be embarrassed that their vehicles don’t crash well together, but the government should also be doing something about this problem! Take it away, you insurance industry-funded goofballs:
The Institute in July 2008 petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to regulate bumpers on SUVs and pickups the same as cars, and require them to match up in a way that shields both vehicles from costly damage. The agency in June 2009 agreed to seek comments on the petition but hasn’t moved forward with a rulemaking or a low-speed compliance test for bumpers.
Regulators have long said that requiring light trucks to have bumpers would compromise off-road maneuverability and make it hard to use these kinds of vehicles at loading ramps. The Institute counters that very few SUVs and pickups are used off road. In addition, bumpers aren’t the limiting factor in most vehicles’ approach and departure angles. Instead air dams, bumper covers, exhaust pipes, and other trim mounted lower than the bumpers get in the way.
Oh no! Maybe the IIHS should petition the government to make rules requiring every vehicle sold in the US to be the exact same size and weight (and hey, why not require the same color while we’re at it?). Because clearly all this choice is having bad, bad, naughty effects… as long as you crash your car into a bigger car. Luckily politicians have a much better grasp of the inherent trade-off between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome than the safety-first ninnies at the IIHS, and we expect the call for bumper-height regulation to fall on deaf ears. Because, taken to its logical conclusion, the IIHS’s logic would essentially force all vehicles onto the same basic platform dimensions, even further reducing the range of choice in an auto market that has already been homogenized enough.
odds of hitting a vehicle made by the same manufacturer that made your car are so astronomically unlikely
Ford has 20% of the North American market . Wouldn’t that mean that if you drive a Ford and get into an accident, chances are 1 in 5 that the other vehicle is also a Ford?
You define the odds of 1 in 5 “astronomically unlikely”?
must consider cars of the same generation…
you can’t expect a ford from the early 90s to match bumper height as a current gen model.
20% of the new car market, not all cars on the road. Considering rates of vehicle retirement and replacement, this should give some idea of how long any new regulation like this will take to have a real effect.
Considering rates of vehicle retirement and replacement, this should give some idea of how long any new regulation like this will take to have a real effect.
Ed’s point was that is was unreasonable to expect an auto company to care about compatibility “because the odds of hitting a vehicle made by the same manufacturer that made your car are so astronomically unlikely that calling automakers to task for not paying enough attention to this meaningless metric is the height of self-important stupidity.” Seems like the odds of a Ford hitting another Ford or a Toyota hitting another Toyota are actually pretty high – about 1 in 5.
The odds are certainly not “astronomically unlikely”.
>>20% of the new car market, not all cars on the road. Considering rates of vehicle retirement and replacement, this should give some idea of how long any new regulation like this will take to have a real effect.
It costs the IIHS, and their insurance company backers, absolutely nothing to propose this and it’ll incur near no loss to their bottom line if it passes. The insurance business is all about probability, even if its 1% less money they need to pay in insurance claims its a win for them.
Cars have become heavier and bulkier throughout the years. Cars are pretty damn heavy these days, we all complain about them, both enthusiasts and environmentalist, and the IIHS is pushing low-probability accidents. What the consumer cares about is personal safety and crash worthiness, if they or their family is injured or worse, not about how much the insurance company needs to pay on cosmetic repairs.
There is a widening gap between IIHS motives and consumer safety. Because there are other reasons why a bumper height of an Ford F250 is different from a Corvette beyond how much insurance has to pay to fix a hood.
First of all, we’re talking about cars on the road, not just new cars. That makes the odds considerably more difficult to calculate. I will concede that “astronomically” is a bit strong, but hear me out…
Second, this would be a new standard, so it would only apply after a given model year. Every vehicle built before that model year will be out of compliance, lowering the chance of being hit by a compliant vehicle (triggering the claimed benefits of the regulation) until all those vehicles have been replaced with compliant models.
Third, there are real trade-offs to this kind of legislation. On a gut level, homogenizing bumper standards will add yet another handcuff to already-shackled designers, further eroding the automobile’s emotional impact in our society (think rubber-bumper MGs). Approach angles and general capability concerns for SUVs are an another obvious issue, and the IIHS clearly thinks that it’s as simple as “nobody goes offroad anymore” (see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLW2OVtP6_w). But absent any real benefits (see the points above), why legislate away capability?
Finally, there’s the elephant in the room: pickups. Pickups sell better than anything else in America… so why isn’t the IIHS crashing F350s into Fiestas before getting all worked up about SUV bumpers? After all, if you’re going to be hit by a Ford when you’re tooling around in your new Fiesta, it most likely be an F-Series pickup doing the hitting. But pickups aren’t as easily vilified as evil “SUVs.” And if SUV bumper heights are legislated downwards, the major effect will be an increase in the sales of four-door pickups.
Oh yes, and the IIHS would have a little feather for its cap. Just the thing to help motivate the next round of poorly thought-through, nannyist pablum.
I don’t get the degree of hostility expressed in this piece. After all, the purpose of bumpers is to lesson the damage when two vehicles collide?
Or are you going to relate this to some freedom in the constitution? ie. “First the bastards will legislate that bumpers should be a common height- next they’ll want our AK-47s!”
I think the hostility is aimed at an organization payed for by the insurance companies attempting a thinly veiled cost cutting measure to increase profits at the cost of your choice.
“Umm yeah, why don’t ya’ll go ahead and drive the same cars to reduce the cost of crash damage, so we don’t have to pay out too much. PS. Don’t expect a premium rate cut either”
If vehicle repairs become cheaper, it’s reasonable to expect that insurance rates will become cheaper as operating costs are reduced and competition takes its course (anyone who’s ever cross shopped car insurance knows there are WIDE discrepancies out there between carriers). The only people that don’t potentially benefit from this change are body shops.
@ Redrum It’s reasonable to expect rate reduction, but I’m betting the farm you’ll never ever see it.
srogers, you’re missing the obvious logical trajectory of the IHS line of reasoning: making vehicles more and more alike in size and shape.
You are correct however that the collectivist impulse seeks to limit choice in a variety of areas from cars to food to firearms.
Somehow I doubt, however, that the IIHS are some kind of cadre of unreconstructed Marxists yearning for the one Americar rather than the kind of overpaid technocrats one rightly associates with the current administration.
I think it should make some kind of good sense to have standardized bumper heights, but I don’t think it should be a requirement. Otherwise we’ll have Ferrari’s with bumpers on the hood!
Maybe the insurance industry should come up with some “optimum” height, and if you’re out of that range you have to pay a little more since you’re more likely to be crunching your (or someone elses) body work.
For trucks, the solution would be simple: a pivoting two-piece bumper. Around town, it looks like an air dam, but is really a bumper. When you go off-road, swing it up 180 degrees and it becomes a brush guard.
They tried that already. Hence we saw Lamborghini Countach’s with windshield height front bumpers inelegantly bolted to the hoods, MGs raised an additional 4 inches so the center of gravity would be dangerous, let alone comical to look at. There were also trucks bottoming out on the roads with bumpers extending to the ground in order to match bumper heights with cars.
There is no elegant design solution to the varied sizes of vehicles we have out on the roads. The best design would be to train drivers to not run into each other.
There ARE federal standards for bumper height. It’s just that they only apply to passenger cars. No additional “research” is needed. (The Ferrari already does have bumpers that conform to the standards.) The issue isn’t that cars have bumpers that are too low, it’s that trucks have bumpers that are too high.
There’s little reason other than styling – which is a non-concern when safety is concerned – for small CUV’s to have bumpers that don’t conform to passenger-car standards.
It probably has not helped matters that the passenger-impact standards in Europe combined with aerodynamic issues have led to cars having a very low, sloping nose. If you want to pass that passenger-impact standard, AND if you want to have good aerodynamics, you can’t have a blunt, square, high front end.
This should have been done a few decades ago, before SUVs became such a large segment of the market. Even a low speed hit is very expensive to a car, and medium speed hits are dangerous to the car and the truck; with no energy to dissipate the truck is more likely to roll.
I think it’s a good idea to lower the bumper height on trucks, and a swing away bumper like carve suggest is a good idea.
One of my pet peeves, however, are these thick diamond plate and solid crash bars you see on the fronts of pickups, especially big 4×4 trucks. Not only do they sit up much higher than the stock ones, but their strength means that any crumple zone built into that truck is done away wiith. That’s good for the truck, but makes it twice as bad for whatever it hits. Crumple zones work to dissipate evergy for both vehicles. Or that is the way it’s supposed to work.
May I add most are never driven off-road, where they truly belong. They are twice as likely to kill someone in another vehicle, and the insurance and registration should reflect this. They are essentially a menace to society. The stopping ability of such a beast is also poor. Insurance should be double and a liability tax for those they will more than likely injure or kill should be something like $3,000 per year to help medical and disability claims so that taxpayers will not have to cover what may go beyond insurance payout.
I find it hard to agree/disagree with both sides. The socialistic family man in me says ‘ban all trucks’, or at least put some restrictions on what can be called a truck. the car enthusiast in me (who nearly always win, and forces me to drive around in a deathtrap made in the 80’s) says ‘screw the regulations, and make people responsible for their own actions’. Why not let manufacturers built proper cars, and have people sign a waiver of responsibility when buying or registering a car. Maybe I actually agree with Ed on this. (I guess anyone who has seen European cars from the 70’s exported to the US should agree)
The problem is when you’re taking responsibility for yourself… and the asshole that kills you because it’s play time in his Hummer doesn’t.
I think it’s a good concept to have all bumpers within a certain range of one another, not just to reduce the cost of repairs (and premiums!), but also to standardize where to place things like side impact beams in cars. All that great safety technology is out the window when my sedan gets t-boned by a lifted F-150. And I don’t buy the approach/departure angle thing for a second–all you have to do is design shorter overhangs. That’s pretty easy in a pickup and most SUVs, where there’s lots of space to work with. But styling rules the day, and throwing a few air dams on there to add 1mpg highway helps to sell more trucks.
I’m a little tired of seeing my insurance rates creep higher and higher while my car’s value goes lower and lower–partial losses (not total losses or medical bills) have the biggest say in overall rates for most people, according to my agent.
Kinda sorta off topic. But, increased bumper height equals increased headlight height. I despise headlights behind me at rearview mirror height.
I’m with Ed on this one. If I buy a truck, I want the extra ground clearance and greater approach/departure angles that come with it. If that can be solved with shorter overhangs, then great.
Oh crap – more ugly “functional” vehicles. Why don’t we just engage the fairground folks and drive around in bumper cars of varying height :-(
How about drivers knowing their stopping distances in different driving/weather conditions so they don’t actually hit each other…?
The hostility directed at this concept is out of place. From a systems perspective, cars are components of a transportation system that interact with each other. Ever notice how the brake lights are always on the back of the car? That’s so people behind know you are stopping! That is a system interaction. Also, note how every car tire and every air pump at a gas station mate perfectly? That’s another part of the system.
Components to protect occupants of vehicles when system elements (individual vehicles) interact should, be definition, be designed to interact. It’s completely obvious to this system engineer that this should be the case.
From a systems perspective all women should wear low cost spandex ponchos to streamline clothing production and inventory.
Your perspective sounds totally devoid of any aesthetic appreciation for the automobile. May I recommend Paul’s Curbside Classic series on this site, there’s a link to it on the upper left hand part of the web page.
The Institute in July 2008 petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to regulate bumpers on SUVs and pickups the same as cars, and require them to match up in a way that shields both vehicles from costly damage.
I love how this has nothing to do with safety. It appears that they just want automakers to build cars that are less expensive for the insurance companies to have repaired..
Bumper regs for safety are fine by me, but profit protection?? No way..
I had an MR2 rear-end my cherokee. My bumper impacted 2/3 the way up his hood. His car was screwed. I had to straighten my exhaust pipe. If he was going faster the bumper might’ve gone threw his windshield (in fact, I’ve seen that happen when a small car rear-ended an 18 wheeler trailer)
yes they are mainly interested in reducing the insured damage. but part of the insured damage are the passengers too. and decreased repair cost lowers my premium.
Not for no reason have different cars different insurance premiums. One thing influencing this is the likelyhood of that being driven like a jerk (VW GTi), but the other thing influencing this, is how expensive it is to repair a certain type of accident.
And many many accidents are very minor and with the old unpainted massive plastic bumpers they wouldn’t even need a repair, but now since everything needs to be color-matched nowadays, the very same bumper-bender is a $ 2,500 bill. I know they talked here about more major accidents. but better bumper coordination also would save lives. that SUV rolls over my fiesta right into my windschield since it is higher. If it was the same height, it would fight against my well engineered crash-zone and i maybe unharmed.
Insurances are eveil… but in this case the evil’s self interest is our interst too. Same with pedestrian safety. Me hitting a pedestrian at 20 mph with a truck and he is dead. Me hitting him with a well engineered front hood makes him live and might only have minor injuries. which case is better for my insurance (premium)? not to forget the invaluable life.
If they want to take the cost out of fender benders then take the insurance out. Cap liability in a low speed event at something like $1000 with balance to be paid by the owner and you’d better believe that a 5 star bumper would be advertised in large print right next to mileage.
If you want to drive a faberge egg with swarovski crystal fenders you should be welcome to. Just don’t expect other people to pay for it.
aspade: how is your idea helping the citizen??? It would help the insurance, though.
the problem is that it not only depends on my car, which i can chose (and the industry doesn’t really gives me much choice, when was the last time you could opt for the less expensive non-painted bumpers? All new cars no have painted bumpers and mirrors, no choice), the problem is I don’t have a choice what hits me or what I hit. That is where regulation would enable some more compatibility.
i know there won’t be a perfect solution as long as minis and semis drive on the same road, but the situation could be improved benefiting everyone.
Ineffective bumpers are a simple consequence of distorted supply and demand.
Individual buyers don’t want effective bumpers because the cost (a heavier, more expensive, awkward looking car) is paid personally while nearly all of the benefit (reduced repair costs) goes to other members of the insurance pool.
Shift liability to the individual owner and a rational cost:benefit decision will favor effective bumpers. The IIHS won’t have to lobby the industry for better bumpers every year because buyers will make that decision on the demand side.
A Cherokee reversed into my car in a parking lot. His bumper dinged (almost imperceptibly) my tailgate and his tailpipe scuffed my bumper. I took it to a Ding-Doctor place to see if they could fix it without getting insurance involved and they gave me a quote for $2000 .. the whole tailgate and bumper had to be removed, disassembled, fixed and resprayed.
The other guy’s insurance are probably going to bump his premiums for years to come to get their money back, something that probably could have been avoided if bumpers were functional and not just aesthetic.
How about separate roads for trucks/SUVS and cars? See? Simple.
Also, I’ll throw in a winding one laner just for the miata owners out there.
This wouldn’t do much unless it also became illegal to change the factory height or lift of the vehicle. I would guess more than 2/3 of the vehicles on the roads around here are full-size pick-ups and many are lifted to the legal maximum as soon as they drive off the dealer’s lot. (The next stop is the auto parts store for the most retina searing blue-white headlamp bulbs possible.)
Every time I see an SUV in an accident the car that hit it is wedged under the rear bumper. My wife’s Civic once got “pushed” like this and thing that did the most damage – the other vehicle tail pipe, it basically speared thru the head light assembly and out the front quarter panel! If cars have regulated bumpers then why not trucks? And what about those single box trucks that have nothing more then a metal bar hanging below the load deck at about hood level? Every time I drive up behind one I think – if I get rear-ended what are the chances that this bar is the last thing I’ll see? If you drive a sports cars that darn bar is at head level! If you rear end my truck the trailer ball is going to do some serious damage, the factory hitch mounting (Class IV) is pretty solid (as it should be) so that hitch ain’t going to much (if any).
I don’t know about your state, but I know that in MI it is illegal to drive around with the ball in the hitch when you aren’t towing something. It’s not like the thing is hard to remove. One clip and it’s out. This is another thing I don’t get why cops don’t focus on. Hos is this not more dangerous than the guy who doesn’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign.
Isn’t this just like closing the barn door after the horse already bolted? Er… the cars and SUV drove off the lot…
Some cars’ front and rear bumpers don’t even line up …
Also, is IIHS going to mandate self-leveling suspension as well?
And cars dive under panic braking, so the front bumper goes down and rear bumper comes up …
I would support a unified bumper height of 8 inches off the road surface, no more. A world where every car is mandated to be lowered to the ground would be like motoring heaven for me!
Sorry, monster truck owners; you’ll have to keep your diesel d-bag wagons strictly off-road now, it’s low-ride or no-ride from now on.
As long as every little detail in this country is to be regulated by some supposed “expert”, ensuring every bumper is at the same height, and compatible, is most likely a great idea. As others have mentioned, side impact beams would surely soon follow suit, and I can’t imagine collision safety would not be improved.
In a saner world, there would be much greater recognition that what should be regulated and minimized, is the impact person A’s behavior has on the safety of person B, not on his own safety. Who gives a rats rear if someone wants to drive 200 miles/hour on a hopped up bicycle without a helmet, in a venue where everyone else is in a car? But if my choice of transportation exposes you to greater risk than your choice of transportation exposes me, I should compensate you for the difference. Regardless of whether I feel I “need” to drive something more dangerous than everyone else. Of course, the exact details of how this should take place is a bit tricky, once the obvious libertarian solution of simply privatizing everything and let markets sort it out, is taken off the table as insufficiently politically correct, or as too non deterministically complicated, to gain favor from contemporary majorities.
I’m not reading much about practicality here. I carry electric motors, tools, and for a second job amps and speakers. No way am I going to put this expensive equipment in the back of a pick up so they are out of consideration.
And no way do I want to lift this equipment into a ha ha “off road” SUV. I am seriously considering a Ford Transit Connect.
Aren’t you worried about your manhood macho types tired of your impractical crap yet? I see no problem with standardized bumpers and low loading heights.
I believe Europe already has a standard bumper height across the board. The Q7 has that cow catcher front bumper over there.
What I don’t get is the off road argument. Why would safety laws for on road vehicles be limited because of off road capabilities. In MI legally you can’t register a car for both on road and off road use. This doesn’t stop it from happening, because I see plenty of lifted trucks on the road that have ORV stickers on the back right above their license plate.
Maybe their could be some sort of detachable front bumper for the 2% of SUV buyers who actually use their vehicle off road.
I got one of these from sparebumper.com for my SUV. It lines up better with passenger cars, saves my bumper and reduces whiplash if I’m hit from the rear.
Anybody who has driven the highways since before the SUV craze knows that instances of buckled hoods and trunks has increased dramatically. The mismatch of the bumpers is to blame for most of this. So, what to do? I think it would be impractical and unfair to mandate that all vehicles have the exact same height but there are options. The Ford Exessive, I mean Excursion had a blocker beam under the bumper to catch the bumper of a car to prevent an underrun. Of course it also added weight which Ford was eager to do to insure a CAFE-free medium weight class but I digress. The concept is good. The same could be done for pickups, too. Regulations could tighten the height difference while still allowing some freedom. As for the aftermarket, making lift kits illegal is a slippery slope. I would think (but may be in error) that the number of lifted vehicles is pretty small compared to the size of the fleet so they shouldn’t present too much of a threat. Or, perhaps the blocker beam could be required. Bottom line is that some careful thinking and a restrained mandate could help a lot without draconian standards. Some, like those who change the front of their truck into battering rams to “protect” themselves won’t be happy but most of them can’t read so they won’t even know…
Cars do have a required bumper height. SUV’s – which are listed as trucks to avoid safety and emissions regulations , don’t. As far as I know only Mercedes standardized the height of their suv bumpers so they didn’t ride up on cars and kill the occupants.
Only Mercedes.
I would think that this might be a reason for outrage. No? No I don’t hear it.
Lower a bumper a few inches and save innocent lives? But only one manufacturer did so. No outrage?
Waste of time.
Car rear-ending SUV thingy…
The cops seem to have some technique at rolling SUV’s with a regualr traffic car and brushbar.
One case I saw on TV the SUV got boxed-in by the cops so the driver put it hard in reverse. It mounted the hood of the patrol car behind and then rolled hard on its side.
How about the IIHS propose licensing standards with that become more stringent as vehicle weight increases to 2, 2.5, 3 and 4 tons?
But they can’t go there : lighter cars -> lower insurance premiums -> lower profits.
My hostility toward this organization is based on IIHS marketing itself as Unicorns Jumping Over Rainbows promising automotive utopia.
Every organization has self interest – the IIHS would go a long way by just admitting some of theirs.
I hit a deer with my 2007 GTI nearly 2 years ago at under 30 mph. The headlight housings were $300each. It was only that cheap because the HID ballasts and bulbs were undamaged. Oh yeah, then the radiator, condenser, and intercoolers were punctured, too. The damaged looked minimal from outside. $3k later, my car was fixed.
When I was 18, I hit an F250 that had the hitch ball installed. I was in my 1993 Impreza. The speed was around 30mph. The grille, radiator mount, bumper skin, bumper beam, and hood were all acquired for under $1000. Paint was $500ish. And it looked like hell after the accident. The tabs on the headlights didn’t break away. The radiator didn’t soak up the impact.
Don’t get me wrong, I prefer driving my safer, newer vehicle, but this proposal will lower the insurance company’s costs (maybe) and we won’t see any benefit from it.
I”m with the IIHS on this one. Many of the monster trucks people seem to think they need for grocery shopping have bumper heights that land between the torso and the head of someone in a normal passenger car.
We’ve had bumper height regulations for cars for years. The industry sidestepped that issue (and a bunch of others) by convincing people that they really wanted trucks as personal transportation vehicles.
I agree. Bumpers are there to protect people as well as sheet metal, and it’s illogical for them to be at different heights. I don’t see why standardized bumper heights should hamstring designers, or be a slippery slope towards legislating onerous requirements.
Maybe it’s time for the return of the loop bumper!
http://www.sunsetclassics.com/1970-dodge-coronet-440/images/1970-dodge-coronet-440.jpg
I got rear ended a few months ago in my 1995 Explorer, it’s been lowered an inch, plus whatever amount the leaf springs have sagged over its 15 years of life. The person that hit me, was driving a last-gen Accord.
The Accord impacted the rear bumper right on the trailer hitch mount (on the bumper, no receiver hitch) and twisted the bumper down on the mounts, the impact also shoved the tailpipe into her bumper cover. Speed I estimated at less than 15 mph, since her air bags did not deploy.
Damage to the Explorer; according to the insurance company and body shop, was estimated to be $2400 thus totalling it. My cost to fix it and not total a perfectly fine vehicle was a total of $60 bucks for a junkyard bumper and mounts, 20 minutes of a large hammer to straighten the frame mount back up, and 5 minutes of panel beating the fender extension back into place. No worse for the wear and I’m happy, and it looks like it was never hit.
Damage to the Accord; slight scuff on the front bumper and a neat semi-circle from the tailpipe.
The real concern to me is the full size trucks have gotten taller and taller over the years and as a result the bumpers get higher and higher. That or we go back to the battering ram bumpers of the ’70s, where a 10mph hit is just a love-tap.
Bumper standards do not take rear-end collisions into consideration, most of which take place with both vehicles braking so the bumper of the back vehicle goes under the bumper of the one in front. They don’t consider lifted vehicles, lowered vehicles, your neighbor with a pallet of bricks in his F-150, your work carpool van, or your kids’ school bus. We already have too much government, and insurance company executives with ideas like this do not help.
I was preparing to make this point and you beat me to it. Set a standard. Then vehicles get loaded, unloaded, they drive on hills and dips and over curbs, the front and rear ends go up and down due to braking or accelleration. This is before anyone customizes a vehicle by raising, lowering, or changing wheel size. You just cannot eliminate bumper mismatches.
If someone wants to propose regs, lets just raise all vehicles up to pickup/van/suv range. This would be easy. But wait, says everyone – it would ruin the way my car handles. I could no longer exit the highway at twice the posted speed. If we move the trucks and SUVs down, they wail about loss of ground clearance and utility.
Not every problem has to be solved. This strikes me as one of them.
When a vehicle is rear-ended, the guy in the back is at-fault, so it doesn’t matter as much that his safety is compromised by his lower bumper height on brake dive since he did it to himself anyway.
I’m all for improving the crash compatibility of vehicles through standardized bumper heights. I don’t care what damage is caused by a small collision. That will just be reflected in insurance cost for that specific vehicle. What I care about is having the strong parts of the vehicles lining up well enough so that taller vehicles don’t just go through the sheet metal and windshield to cause major injury to those in smaller vehicles.
I’d even like to see vehicle weight standardized, provided it is done according to market demand. Every vehicle should be within a few hundred pounds of the average. As the average changes, so must the vehicles. Sure, larger vehicles are needed for some things and they would still be allowed to exist but, as with other large vehicles, there should be additional legal expectations and requirements that they be driven in a safe and professional manner. The consequences for truly harming another person while driving should be severe, and I’m not talking the easily-faked soft tissue injuries, which our progressive Saskatchewan socialist insurance thankfully won’t even acknowledge when it comes to payouts since it can’t be proven (though you can still sit at home and collect 90% of your previous income if you can’t work). I’m talking real injuries. For example, if you are at-fault for the death of someone else on the road, you should never be allowed to drive again. If people were held more accountable for the results of their actions on the road, maybe we wouldn’t even need regulation to work it all out. Maybe people would drive vehicles that are only as big as they really need, to avoid harming others, instead of driving as big a vehicle as they can afford to protect themselves from other drivers, knowing that they will get no more than a slap on the wrist if they hurt someone else.
Mercedes has done it. Honda has done it. Bumper height compatibility DOES make sense.
A forum like this is a silly place to discuss bumper height. It’s a proper topic when sitting inside a Lotus 7.
I don’t get all the vitriol from Ed. Others have said it — bumper heights on cars have been standardized since the mid-70s, when those rubber-bumper MGs appeared. There’s no reason that CUVs like the ones tested couldn’t have matching heights — no one’s taking a RAV4 off-road, for example. And even for pickups and larger SUVS, the concerns about approach and departure angles can be resolved by shortening overhangs. Ground clearance is not an issue here, as the minimum regulatory bumper height is 16 inches, far more than the ground clearance on any pickup or SUV as it leaves the factory.