Mike Dulberger recently gave us the 411 on Forbes magazine’s “Most Dangerous Vehicles of 2009.” According to the safety campaigner, Forbes spiked his concerns about the [S]mart ForTwo’s safety. During the course of our discussions, I asked Mr. D. to right that wrong: send me the “real” 10 most dangerous new vehicles for sale in the US. And so he did. Those of you of a statistical bent can download Dulberger’s data dump for the dangerous decernhere, including all the factors that comprise his SCORE index. And here are the updated stats for ALL 315 new vehicles for which Dulberger’s non-profit, informedforlife.org, has calculations. As you might expect (if you knew the man), Mike’s got something to say on this terrible table. Jump for same, and his list of the ten most potentially deadly vehicles . . .
Hi Robert – My name is Karah Street and I work for a PR firm that represents smart USA. I see that you have written about the new crash test conducted with the smart fortwo by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), in which the smart for two was paired against a Mercedes C-Class. Two other cars were paired with larger vehicles from the same automaker (Honda Fit vs. Accord, and Toyota Yaris vs. Camry). What you may not know is that this test represents a type of crash that is rare and extreme — less than 1% of all accidents can compare to this type of test — and it is neither recognized nor required by federal safety regulators. By pitting “big vs. small,” this test seems to have one goal: to imply that bigger, heavier cars are always safer.
A system that warns drivers of children about to cross the road is being evaluated in Aberdeenshire.
Called the Amparo See Me, the system uses a tag that is attached to a child’s school bag to trigger warning lights on bus stops or at crossings.
This then warns drivers that children are in the vicinity, and studies have shown that the speed of passing vehicles reduces by an average of 8mph.
The system is already used in Sweden.
Recent UK Department for Transport figures show that in 2005, 28,126 children aged 0-15 were injured in road accidents. Of these, 331 were seriously injured and 141 were killed.
TTAC doesn’t “do” press embargoes. While some of our writers have put me in the awkward position of respecting their desire to respect a manufacturer’s prohibition on publishing a review until the appointed second (I kid you not), if someone sends me anything other than private correspondence, I feel free to publish it. This evening (Monday), the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) e-mailed TTAC a couple of pdfs (click here or here), They were embargoed until one minute after midnight, Tuesday. So I immediately decided to publish them. Besides, big whoop; Pentagon papers these ain’t. It’s an anecdotal study of three—count ’em, three—crashes. The match ups: Toyota Yaris/Toyota Camry, Honda Fit/Honda Accord, Smart Fortwo/Mercedes C-class. What’s up with the lack of inter-brand rivalry? Apparently, “the smallest cars do a comparatively poor job of protecting people in crashes.” Huh. And just in case that’s a bit tame (despite the usual photos), the IIHS did some number crunching on fuel economy. They’d like you to know that “even though fuel economy is their biggest selling point, many cars just a little bit bigger get close to, or the same mpg as the mini and micro cars tested.”
A year ago, TTAC published a story about out-of-control Toyota Tacomas. Since then, reports continue to surface of “unintended acceleration” events in Lexus ES and IS and Toyota Camry and Camry Solara vehicles. Toyota insists that all-weather floor mats are causing the problem; the accelerator becomes stuck under the rubber. Autocoverup.com alleges, well, you know. “This is a known problem with over 432 complaints,” the site’s author insists. According to NHTSA’s Defect Investigation’s database, reports of unintended acceleration in Lexus ES models first surfaced around 2004 and continued until late 2008. One report (ODI-NHTSA Complaint Number 10252860) describes the problem:
Off-road as in not on a public road, rather than mud plugging in a Jeep Wrangler. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now in the bi-annual business of “reporting [non crash] injuries and fatalities involving motor vehicles not in traffic.” This year’s total: 841,000 injuries and 1747 fatalities. The Accident Reconstruction Newsletter reports the overlap between the NHTSA and the Darwin Awards: “More than half of the non crash fatalities occurred when a vehicle fell on a person who was under it or from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning. The most common types of non crash injuries seen in emergency departments were injuries while entering or exiting a vehicle (estimated 164,000 per year), injuries from closing doors (estimated 148,000 per year) and injuries from overexertion such as while unloading cargo or pushing a disabled vehicle (estimated 88,000 per year).” Let’s drill down on the morbid stuff . . .
I consider the Wrecked Exotics website something of a public service: warning supercar owners that money does not immortality make. OK, you can’t really call exotic car owners “the public.” So how about this: the site may convince supercar owners to drive more carefully, which could stop them from smashing the obscure objects of our desire, reducing the number of supercars available for sale. (Plan for success I say.) Alternatively, Wrecked Exotics could be seen as particularly nasty car porn: supercar snuff snaps. Any way you look at it, the majority of these 47 photos of hard core horror stories do NOT involve supercar slammage. It’s mainstream carnage, plain and simple. And all of them are damn hard to look at. You have been warned.
Results from the IIHS’ latest small SUV roof crush test are making the rounds of the autoblogosphere, and as usual the spoonfed information is being dutifully regurgitated in the name of consumer safety. What goes largely unreported is the fact that the IIHS is gleefully moving the roof crush goalposts, a unilateral decision with little benefit to consumers and a host of unanticipated consequences. Current roof crush standards mandate that vehicle roofs must support 1.5 times the weight of the vehicle, and have been in effect since 1973. The IIHS has been campaigning for years to increase government roof strength standards, and an uprated standard of 2.5 strength-to-weight ratio is currently being considered by the NHTSA. So where does the 2.5 standard rate with the IIHS? “Marginal” is the score that the IIHS gives to vehicles meeting this not-yet approved standard. Huh?
Ultra luxury cars are cheap. Not for folks like you and me, obviously, but the Maybach’s target market, for example, consider their wheels one of their lesser expenses. Especially when you compare the cost of a car—any car—to, say, a Gulfstream IV (which is such a guilty pleasure these days). Not to mention (please!) divorce. For players at this level, a Quattroporte is still small beer. Even so, I reckon Joe Walsh nailed it when he sang, “My Maserati does 185; I lost my license, now I don’t drive.” For those wealthy people legally obliged to sit in the back of the bus, or simply prefer to be driven, LCW Automotive presents a little personal Obama-mania. Tacky? Yes. And?
Obviously, I don’t have an statistical data on Ferrari crashes. Neither, I suspect, does the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA); they don’t tend to compile stats on marques that sell in the hundreds. But as someone who spends his days floating through the autoblogosphere, I’ve noticed a number of halved Ferraris. We have the famous Enzo crash on the PCH, and now this, a fatal accident involving the mixed martial artist/TapOut clothing designer artist known as “The Mask.” So I clicked on over to wreckedexotics.com to search for more anecdotal evidence. While there are a number of Ferraris with fire-vaporized back ends (that’s where the engine is), I didn’t find a trove of demi-Ferraris. To defend my access to all those Ferrari press junkets (as if), I’ll posit that ANY car would break in two if it happened to hit something immovable side-on at a high rate of speed. In fact, it could very well be a good thing, providing you’re ahead of the fissure, as the cleaving process dissipates lethal energy. The question is, is that true?
I’ve got a question for the best and the brightest-child car seats in two seater cars. I drive a ’06 S2000 and I’m expecting my first child. I’ve read my owner’s manual which foretells doom and gloom for children who ride along. However having ridden in my father’s 190SL extensively (sometime with only meager lap belts holding me), some of these hyper safety warnings ring a little false. If I take the necessary steps to make sure an airbag will not deploy when a child is with me, is the front seat just as safe as the back seat? Or is there another reason children should be in the back seat only? If you post this, in the interests of protecting my mortified wife, please only use my screen nic.
I admit, I have a strange fascination with watching cars crash. And though large, heavy cars can cause some of the most dangerous accidents, there’s something particularly satisfying about watching a small car hit the wall (or get hit by a large, heavy car). As an American I feel hard-wired to expect smaller cars to explode into a million pieces of tin foil and socialized medicine every time I see one making a slow-mo impact in a crash test. But the glory days of “hoo boy!” moments in compact crash tests seem to be coming to a close. Toyota’s tiny iQ just logged a five-star rating from Europe’s NCAP crash testers, and as this video shows, the drama just never shows up. A cocoon of airbags, some brilliant crumpling and surprising side-impact resilience take a lot of the “sucks to be that dummy” entertainment value from the iQ test video. Oh well. I guess it’s time to move on to watching Chinesecar crashtests. Schadenfreude doesn’t feed itself.
“All of a sudden out of nowhere, the check engine light comes on, along with a couple of other lights, the chimes start going off, and the display under the speedometer alternates between “Service Stabilitrack Soon” and “Service Brakes Immediately”. When this happens, I lose power braking! Luckily, all 3 times I was going very slow in electric-only mode, twice at drive-thrus and once in the grocery lot. The first couple of times this happened I turned off the ignition and restarted, and everything was back to normal, except that the “Check Engine” light stayed on for a day or so and then it went off. Yesterday when this happened for the 3rd time, I had to turn of and restart the truck about 10 times to get it back to normal.”
gltech published a brief blog beginning to outline his brake issues, which he’s now expanded to include battery problems. Other posters on greenhybrid started chiming-in; they’re having the same issues with firmware updates and such. Several are also losing braking on a regular basis.
This little tidbit kind of encompasses everything GM faces now and major challenges going forward. The potential inability to compete in the hybrid game and how it relates to the Volt; the disintegrating dealer network and lack of communication between different arms of GM; and the brain drain as GM sheds staff that probably caused the minor problem of losing brakes in a brand new $50k car.
A US Department of Transportation study released last month shows that thousands of Americans (documented or otherwise) are injured or killed each year in vehicle-related accidents unrelated to driving. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) “Not in Traffic Surveillance – 2007 Highlights” study reveals that a total of of 1747 fatalities and 841k injuries were attributed to non-traffic crashes and non-crash incidents. The agency compiled the annual estimates to provide the first-ever look at the magnitude of accidents that cannot be resolved with a new law enforced with traffic citations. Among the findings: 168 individuals are killed each year by falling vehicles. Another 88 peg it by falling out of a car. Electric windows reduce the gene pool by five unlucky souls, and three die while locked in the trunk. About 22 percent of injuries are caused while entering or exiting a vehicle. Twenty percent of injuries are caused by car doors. Some 10k end up in ER after getting jiggy with jacks or hoists. The NHTSA compiled the information from a number of sources including police reports, hospital records and an injury database maintained by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
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