Today is Friday so I'm keeping this one short. Reading through the Ask the B&B from earlier, I noticed that the person asking was leaning towards a Subaru Tribeca because it's safe. Yes, but it's also hideous!! For certain, one of the very ugliest cars made during an ugly time. I might opt for a lacerated spleen rather than be seen in one of those. I really might. And it's an SUV, too. As the reader was asking about a vehicle for her two kids, she's probably thinking that SUVs are safer. They aren't, as you're more likely to lose control and fall off a mountain in an SUV than a car. Sure, if you run head-on into a Brink's truck the larger bulk of the SUV will insulate you more than a car. But in a car you can proactively avoid the accident, rather than reactively absorbing the impact energy. And finally, just to kick it up a notch, have safety ratings ever influenced your purchases? Put another way, you like one car better than the other but the former gets four safety stars to the latter's five — what do you do?
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Probably the less safe one if I really like it more, I’ve never really considered the safety part when shopping cars unless it’s a complete deathtrap. Although the car I’m driving now doesn’t even have airbags, I think the best safety is to not drive like an idiot and try and be more aware about what’s going on around you.
I would rather avoid the accident altogether with a small car than have a marginally better chance of surviving with a larger car or suv.
Passive safety is a good thing. But for teens, their biggest risk is not one of getting hit, but of being stupid enough to hurt themselves.
Teens should have the most boring car possible, with minimal horsepower, a crappy radio, no connector for an Ipod, no charger for the phone, and no room to hold a large group of people who can encourage them to act like idiots. A stick shift would be preferable, so that they are forced to use both hands for driving.
They already feel invincible enough as is without giving them a tank to enhance their feelings of immortality. I’d help to pay for the vehicle and cover the cost of routine maintenance, but they should have to pay for the gas, insurance and any accident damage, so that they see the connection their behavior and the expense of owning it.
My dad used to buy Mercedes-Benz cars because their safety was bar-none tops (except for a Volvo). That was a perception that didn’t change for a long time, now it’s a bit different. My 2006 Mazda 3 wagon has more safety features than their current 2002 E430 4matic, granted it’s a smaller car. Volvo and MB are no longer the safety champions they once were, same with engineering.
Many new vehicles are extremely well-built and very safe for most accident scenarios. There will always be freak accidents where no seatbelt, no airbag, no roll-over prevention system will save you. Stars don’t matter at that point. I don’t really know what the difference between a 4-star and 5-star car is…but they’ll both keep me alive in an accident. So will a 3-star car, maybe a few more bruises, but I’m doubtful that any of it will be life-threatening.
If you buy a car purely on safety, then get the biggest damned thing you can get and deal with all the other inconviences that come with that vehicle too. Also, make sure your driveway gate doesn’t slide into the rear quarter-panel. Because that would negate the percieved safety of having your fortress and you excessively large vehicle will be in the body shop while the rental company gives you an equally, but not percieved, safe mid-size vehicle.
It’s truly sad when people think their safety is only viable through such measures, while putting other’s safety in greater jeopardy.
I honestly think accident prevention should be considered in safety ratings. How well the vehicle does to avoid testing the crumple zones, airbags and what-not. Something that a Mercedes car would trump a large SUV in. While having less impact in other manners.
Finally, I wonder which is safer: my 1984 Volvo 760 or my 2006 Mazda 3 wagon.
Safety used to matter little to me. I drove an Olds Cutlass Calais with door mounted seatbelts, a death trap S10, a really fast deathtrap Eclipse Turbo and a Geo Tracker that by nature was less than safe.
Now that I have a family it matters to me. Quite a bit. My wife’s car is a Subaru Tribeca in the “classic” 2007 style. She picked it out, she loves it and thinks it is pretty. I have no concerns with her driving it around and know that her and the kids stand a very good chance of surviving an accident with little injury. I cannot rely on my wife to treat driving the same way I do, so her driving a safe vehicle is the best I can do.
Yes, safety matters. As someone that has been hit more than once by other drivers, it’s a prerequisite before I will consider any car purchase. It’s like mechanical reliability and not rusting in the first five years – if a manufacturer can’t get safety right then I’m not interested in their product.
TEXN3:
Your Mazda is an order of magnitude safer than your Vovlo.
And if you take into account metal fatigue, orders.
Safety matters, but only when it’s bad. This is why Chinese cars will have a hard time in the US before they remedy that. So many cars get “very good” safety ratings now that it’s hardly a selling point anymore (thus the fall of Volvo). It’s become a given to get 4 stars in all categories.
I think safety is important, but people need to reevaluate “Safety” and, perhaps, use their brains a little more when thinking about it.
Examples:
* I’ve seen a fair number of people in two-ton trucks (bought “for safety”) that have children strapped in carseats that have been installed completely improperly.
* 4WD/AWD without winter tires. AWD doesn’t help you stop.
* Driver training. I’m starting to think people should be tested every five years.
* Stability control and side-air bags are important additions for any car. That they’re not available on cheaper ones is one reason why cheaper cars are labelled unsafe.
When I buy a car, safety and economy are paramount. That said, don’t accept “wive’s tales” about what constitutes safety (or economy, or reliability). Do the research, read, think. If more people did that, we wouldn’t have dug ourselves so deeply into the SUV market.
The safest thing I can do is put myself in the driver seat. In “car crashes (2+cars)” I’ve been in 10-12 in my life and only been the driver in 1. At all other times I was the passenger.
My wife is in a 2000 neon (not a safe car at all) has been in one accident (someone hit her by swithcing lanes in an intersection while making a right turn) and the damage was VERY minor. Considering that most of the driving is rush hour….I don’t see safety as being that important. You don’t need a tank to survive being rear ended at 5mph while sitting in traffic.
Safety is one of the last items I look at while shopping. Then again, my last purchase was a motorcycle… :)
If I ever get a kid, I’ll buy it the least-cool, least-fun-to-drive, highest-crash-rating, safest car I can find. Something like a Taurus, or a slightly used Volvo S80 (with the wimpy V6, of course).
God help them find a date.
No matter how much safety you try to develop and implement. You cannot out engineer ’stupid’.
Physics hurts.
I think the consideration of safety increases with age; the older we get the more we appreciate the value of life; it increases again when you become a parent.
No more Caterham 7s for me!
:(
Safety CANNOT be quantified. It really can’t. Well, maybe it could be, but those pretending to quantify it rarely compare the most important factor – time and money lost to provide the benefit.
If the average person lives to be seventy. And we increase that by one day by lowering the speed limit, do we really gain anything if the average person now spends 72 hours more in their car over their lifetime?
It amazes me that this question NEVER comes up in regard to safety initiatives. NEVER.
Safety is a factor for me, certainly, but as other have pointed out, there’s more to safety than how well the car handles a crash. I also look for a nimble, manoeuvrable vehicle that can avoid the crash in the first place.
For the record, I chose an Audi A3. High crash test ratings for its size, and very nimble.
Landcrusher
do we really gain anything if the average person now spends 72 hours more in their car over their lifetime?
You don’t like spending 72 hours in your car?
@Landcrusher:
Whether or not it you feel it can be, safety is, in fact, quantified by various entities. You can argue that they’re not doing it right, but you should be prepared to back that up against reams of statistical evidence showing otherwise. Science and math are hard — and accurate, if used properly. I would very much appreciate hearing the facts of the matter.
Your second paragraph would make sense if all old people had an accident on the penultimate day of their life if the speed limit is set above a certain level. You’re averaging the lives saved over the population. I assure you that (with the possible exception of organ donation) you cannot actually divide a human life up and give the pieces to other humans to extend their lives.
The question is actually: does lowering the speed limit save lives? Otherwise phrased as: if you save X lives by limiting it to (X)XX MPH, is it worth it? I’m surprised you’ve never heard this question asked before in regards to safety initiatives. The cost/benefit ratio of safety features is a fairly common ideological battle in the United States.
If you don’t actually believe that they can rigorously and accurately prove that lowering the speed limit will save lives, then I would think that should be your argument and you shouldn’t be engaging on the statistical level at all, because you’re just validating the quantification.
Safety is an illusion that people comfort themselves with. An elaborate form of denial.
They buy a “safe” vehicle then drive it with minimal attention and questionable skill, all while drinking coffee, eating lunch, talking on a phone, and letting the vehicle shift gears for them – thereby lowering their margin of safety significantly.
Safety is a marketing methodology, nothing more.
–chuck
Most folks expect a vehicle with a high degree of passive safety features, ABS, ESP, air bags, crush zones.
At the same time since the vehicle has a high degree of passive safety, they can forget about driving.
Jonny,
Safety(crash test results etc.)is my number two concern. First, my budget and what I am willing to spend. I narrowed the class of vehicle I wanted to a compact SUV. I looked at five different models all new 2008’s. Ford Escape (one test drive and I passed), Hyundai Tucson (horrible shift points), Toyota RAV4 (roomiest), Honda CRV (best interior), and I ended up buying a Subaru Forester.
After viewing Government crash test results only the Toyota, Subaru, and Honda were left standing. IMO the CRV is the best looking of the group. Subaru and Toyota being the most mild/bland of the five. In the end I had a hard time finding a CRV built in Japan so I bought my first Subaru.
So far I have put 2,500 miles on it and can say I am impressed. I run very high air pressure in my tires (Max 40 PSI, I run 39 PSI) and I installed a K&N air filter. The majority of my traveling is done at highway speeds and I have been averaging 27.8 mpg.
With all of that said, I most likely would have bought a CRV had I found one. The Forester took some time to accept as a viable alternative. For the record even if the Tribeca was in my scope I would opted for a Highlander twice over! I can get past plain and ordinary but the UGLY Tribeca? That is crazy talk…
chuckgoolsbee –
Safety is marketing methodology, nothing more.
That’s a ridiculous assertion. The Ford Pinto is quantifiably less safe than a Ford Fusion, in every conceivable way. Structurally, dynamically, and technologically the Fusion is light years ahead.
Pretending that there’s an inverse relationship between a car’s built in safety factor and the driver’s instinct for self preservation is an elaborate form of denial. Which would you rather have your son/daughter drive?
It’s a big deal to me… it keeps me off motorcycles.
My ‘02 Miata is acceptably safe to me overall, but I do feel nervous at intersections because it would be pretty bad in a side impact (it does fine in frontal crashes). Side impacts are probably the type I have the least control over, so I would not mind paying a bit more for added safety there, next time.
I would not buy a car with two star safety ratings as a daily driver. I’d probably be okay with three if I was in love with the rest of the package.
My prioritization of vehicle characteristics is:
1. Performance
2. Style
3. Reliability
4. Serviceability
5. Practicality
6. Safety
Active safety (handling, road-holding, acceleration and other performance benefits) is wildly exaggerated. We all envision ourselves drifting, counter-steering, rotating and otherwise skillfully accident-avoiding like Schumacher making it through first-lap carnage, but in fact it rarely happens.
It’s nice that a good-handling car is generally speaking safer than some topheavy pig on iron-hard tires, but when the drunk suddenly comes around the corner in our lane, precious few of us will react like Michael. Or even Ralf.
Yes, safety is important, but as has been mentioned, beating your kids in safety-driving submission is much more important than any airbags, starting with paying attention to the road. I have no kids yet, but keep yelling at my 20 year-old sisters-in-law for using their phones in the car, and I don’t quite understand that their dad doesn’t ground them for that.
And beyond the “small cars are more nimble” (valid) argument, SUVs are “safer” only if their mass is an advantage, i.e. vs. small obstacles, such as another small cars or a young tree. Hit a strong brick wall, a large tree or similar obstacle, and the SUV won’t be any safer than a small car of the same generation (i.e. comparable safety features).
Zeit,
No, not at 20 mph.
Faster,
You completely missed my point, and you made lots of mistakes. I won’t argue with your points because you didn’t argue with mine. Furthemore, you made some patently false statements about what can and cannot be measured, and even insulted my intelligence by trying to decide what I do know or understand.
Here is a restatement of my basic principle:
No matter how much math you apply, or statistics you use, if you do not compare the cost of time lost to time saved your work is really useless. If you could save someone’s life by isolating them in a coffin for the rest of their life, would you say you saved anything? NO! The person would choose after a short time to just die instead.
How about this, there is a terminal cancer patient that needs our prayers. If ten thousand of us spend the day praying, the patient will live another day. Shouldn’t we all take turns praying for them? No, at some point, saving them has a cost beyond the benefit. If you don’t EVER measure that cost, your conclusions are just so much worthless hard facts and math.
Or, if we all stop driving, no one will die from car accidents. Let’s ban cars and trucks and watch the average life span PLUMMET along with the quality of life.
Ask the wrong question, you get the WRONG answer. Most safety initiatives involve a much more subtle trade off than my examples, but if you don’t measure the other side of the equation YOU CANNOT KNOW.
I became more interested in how many “stars” a vehicle got in crash tests after I learned what kind of injuries are associated with each star. After getting married and starting a family it became even more important.
Living in Detroit, 70-80% of the other vehicles on the road are SUV’s or pick-ups, so if you drive something smaller and get hit, you will be testing the boundaries of the protection your vehicle can offer. It affects what we buy, most certainly.
AKM: And beyond the “small cars are more nimble” (valid) argument,…
I’ve never seen any proof that “nimble” cars will help anyone avoid an accident. Not to knock good handling – I appreciate it as much anyone else.
As Mr. Wilkinson correctly notes, so many accidents happen so quickly that that drivers just don’t have any time to react. If you are on a two-lane country road with a 50 mph speed limit, and a drunk traveling at 75 mph in the opposite direction crests the hill in your lane, you will not have enough time to react, regardless of whether you are driving a VW GTI or a Ford Explorer. The superior handling of the GTI is basically useless in that situation.
As I said, I like nimble vehicles as much as anyone else, but unless the driver has razor-sharp reflexes, terrific handling isn’t going to “save” him or her from many fatal accidents.
The ironic thing about the whole safety debate is that consumer demand is really driving improved safety, and forcing manufacturers to proactively address the issue. Before, the federal government mandated safety equipment that either required no action on the part of the driver (collapsible steering columns, shatterproof windshields) or could be ignored by the driver (safety belts). With few exceptions – Mercedes, Volvo – manufacturers complied with federal regulations, and that was about it.
In our family, we NEVER wore safety belts until they were mandated via state law.
Now everyone is much more safety conscious…and, as a result, ALL vehicles are really much safer than ever before. I regularly read of people surviving very serious accidents. Those who don’t, with few exceptions, either weren’t wearing safety belts, or were drunk, or both.
For a college research project, I had to research copies of the local paper from the mid-1960s. It was a small town paper, so fatal auto accidents were newsworthy, usually accompanied by a photo of the wrecked vehicle. What struck me about the fatal automobile accidents was how many of them occurred at relatively low speeds. They are the kind of accidents that, today, that would not be fatal. At the most, the person suffers a broken limb.
While I’m sure it matters to some people, I am not one of them. I can’t live my life fearing the worst “what if” scenarios my reptilian brain could come up with.
But attitudes change when your loved ones are in the car.
It really depends on who the car owner will be. If I’m going to be the primary driver, a car has to be absolute death trap before safety starts to influence my buying decision (an early VW Ghia with no seatbelts for instance). For friends and family members it does become a consideration, and if kids are going to be regular passengers in the car, or the regular driver is inept, then it becomes a pretty big consideration.
It does amuse me how many motorcycle riders will be hop in one of my cars and then become nervous and uncomfortable when they realize it has no airbags, fairly hard dash materials, and the seatbelt latches are strange and don’t look very effective – yet I’m pretty sure my cars are way safer than any motorcycle! Driver skill and comfort with the machine are part of safety as well. I regularly commute at high speed in traffic with late 60s Fiats that most people would consider nearly suicidal, but I rarely ride my motorcycle on highways, and when I do I’m very cautious. Why? I know I’m a good automobile driver and I’m comfortable with my ability to handle even the worst car in an emergency. I also know I’m a pretty pedestrian motorcycle rider, and I think it best that I try to avoid tense driving situations when I’m behind the handlebars…
Safety is certainly one of the things I consider when buying a car–although I really didn’t consider safety when I made my first car purchase, a then eight year old ‘77 Toyota Corolla total stripper, from a guy who later become one of the Iraq weapons inspectors, but I digress. I would, for example, be much more inclined to get aCivic than a Mazda3, in large part because the side crash test results on the Mazda aren’t good.
But passive safety is generally quite good in the US fleet, and I’m not about to do what one of my friends did in the mid-’80s, after his Rabbit was totaled in a way that should have killed someone but didn’t: he bought a Pontiac Parisienne wagon, a real monster.
As for what kids should drive, I defer to PCH’s comment on the first page of the posts.
Then there was Jared Diamond, the noted author of Guns GErms and Steel, probably the best book I ever read (the subject is the origin and evolution of civilization). 25 years after he graduated from MIT (in the mid-60s I think) he was still driving the Beetle he’d bought while a student there, probably doing the double nickel on the LA freeways. Then, around age 50, he got married, and had two kids. The Beetle was retired, entirely for safety reasons.
All modern cars are safer than they used to be years ago. I may consider it when looking at a minivan for my wife but when it comes to my cars I couldn’t care less about which car is safer. They’re all safe enough.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say that this is one area that having government intervention is a good thing. It tends to level the playing field and takes a factor of value and “tends” to make it a non-issue when buying (“yeah, all cars have that these days”). So when one is in the market looking for a car they WANT, they can ass/u/me there car is as safe as the next one.
Actually, the used car with a breakdown reserve would be a great lesson. Don’t forget to keep a record of the costs over the 4 years in school to compare.
This way, you can get an older, 4 cylinder RAV 4 or CRX, and save money on gas as well.
@ Ralph SS : Uhh, no thanks. I have a brain, I’m happy to use it, you know, to make decisions and stuff.
Safety is a factor, as in, I don’t want a car that fails as badly in a crash test as some of the chinese cars have recently. If I’m buying a minivan, the safer the better. Sportscar, no airbags please. A nice rollcage and good seatbelts and chairs will suffice. Motorcycle, yes they should be legal. You only live once, living in a cocoon of safety is not worth living at all.
Safety ratings certainly are one of my considerations when purchasing a vehicle. It’s something I’d be willing to spend extra for, and something that’s capable of removing vehicles from my list.
# TEXN3 :
June 13th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Finally, I wonder which is safer: my 1984 Volvo 760 or my 2006 Mazda 3 wagon.
Here’s your answer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYaSBW7pELQ
There’s one safety feature that I absolutely require in any car I would drive regularly: side curtain airbags. I place top priority in avoiding head injuries. Side impacts are most likely to create head trauma: the temporal bone is by far the weakest part of the skull, and without side airbags there’s little more than a sheet of glass and a door frame separating the side of your head from whatever intrudes into the cabin.
Otherwise, safety is generally one of the top three attributes I use in choosing a car. While I try to do my part to drive with reasonable care, and choose a car that I would be able to handle competently in an emergency, active safety isn’t enough. I want airbags, crumple zones, and anti-whiplash headrests, because the idiocy of some other drivers is practically a guarantee.
Assuming that many if not most cars have got the basics with regard to head on collisions, I still place more emphasis on side protection capability, due to the dreaded Suburban Mother/Father Yakking on Cellphone whose SUV runs a red light and T-bones my car.
Ditto here on cars that have decent seats–i.e., active headrests and which are well anchored in the car. Many times the debilitating injuries come from rear-enders that don’t even total the car–but if you don’t have the anti-whiplash seats, you’re still in trouble.
Chuck:
Safety is an illusion that people comfort themselves with. An elaborate form of denial.
They buy a “safe” vehicle then drive it with minimal attention and questionable skill, all while drinking coffee, eating lunch, talking on a phone, and letting the vehicle shift gears for them – thereby lowering their margin of safety significantly.
Safety is a marketing methodology, nothing more.
At the risk of bringing out the IIHS stormtroopers, the MOST important part of the car, and the one which contributes most to real safety, is the operator. So long as the Insurance industry keeps promulgating the myth that safety is achieved solely through heavier and more feature-laden cars, we will not hit the root of the problem. Chuck’s point is absolutely on the money; if we don’t recognize that the hardware side of safety is still dramatically marginalized by inattentive and skill-less drivers, “safety” is a marketing methodology only.
Safety only has to be important once.
Fear sells.
Auto manufacturers finally figured out that rather than fight safety requirements, they can use them to instill fear in drivers, hopefully getting them to buy new products more often.
That is why even a Civic now weighs over 2,700 lbs, and Hondas typically are some of the slightest built cars around.
@HankScorpio: Yeah, but that Eclipse was a blast to drive. I know I nearly killed myself several times in it.
In the past, having fast nimblish cars has kept me from being in accidents. Several times, some jackass has come on over into my lane as I’m just getting past their back bumper and depending on the situation I’ll floor it to get around them and then scream at them from the comfort of my car.
I must admit, that safety hasn’t factored into any of my vehicle purchases. The only thing I’ve looked at is airbags, and you can’t get a new car w/o airbags now so it’s a non issue for me. I’m a single male nearing 30, ftr.
I say live fast, die young, make sure your insurance policy is up to speed.
No matter what kind of car you drive, make sure the tires, brakes, wipers, windshield washers, seat belts, and any other safety systems are perfect.
And don’t try and drive a big hulking SUV as if it were a little car. Big cars are harder to control, harder to get out of the way in an emergency, and, in most cases, take longer to come to a stop.
Personally, I’ll take every safety feature I can buy: gobs of airbags, dynamic stability control, crush zones, you name it. I would rather pay an extra $1000 for DSTC, better headlights, and blind spot noticiation then for an upgraded stereo or leather seats.
A number of people here seem to equate a manual transmission with automatic prevention of distracted driving and, thus, increased safety.
Given that a large portion of the drivers on the road today learned to drive using a “slushbox,” (myself included) it would be inherently more dangerous for them to suddenly switch to a stick. Rather than looking away from the road because they’re trying to dial a cell phone, they’ll instead focus all of their energy on trying not to stall in an intersection.
If people learn to drive a stick and feel comfortable with a stick, then a valid argument can be made for this increasing safety. But once you’ve started driving, there are few options for learning to drive a manual — unless you have a friend willing to teach and willing to risk the expensive transmission bits of his/her car.
I can teach–and have taught–someone to drive a manual transmission car in half an hour. Got me laid once, in fact.
I have found that 70 percent of the “teaching” actually happens beforehand, ensuring with diagrams or whatever that your student doesn’t think a clutch pedal is “something that you push down and it does something.” Once they understand the principle of two clutchplates slowly coming together and imparting rotation from one to the other, most of the job is done.
Could get you laid too.
Most cars manufactured today are very safe in a collision. Of course there will be differences, but most are minor, unless you are talking about a really cheap and small car. I think that modern passive and active safety systems are invaluable, and I will not buy a car if it does not have Stability Control, but the best safety device is the DRIVER. Drive smart, and you can avoid most problems. Additionally, I’d rather have a car that handled well, then a boat with a million airbags.
I’m willing to pay money for safety features, but I’m not willing to buy a larger vehicle for more safety. That’s a philosophy that just doesn’t jive well with me. Also, I probably wouldn’t turn down a vehicle that I liked a lot because of safety ratings, unless it was really dangerous. A one star difference is a consideration, but not a deal breaker.
I do think that people over exaggerate the need for the safest possible vehicle. The way they talk, you would think that high speed collisions are inevitable for every single person. From what I can tell, the likelihood of a collision where the difference between a Fit and a Suburban saves your life is extremely low. If you walk outside you could be hit by lightning, but we bet on those odds, just like many other things in our lives. I will also say that I have had an instance in my life where had I not been driving an agile car, I would have hit a full grown deer at 65 mph, and another where if I had been driving a vehicle with a high center of gravity, it would have rolled over, turning a situation that was very minor into one that would be very dangerous.
Safety, comfort, driving feel and efficiency are all high priorities for me. Fashion and the whims of style are of secondary concern.
The relative crash worthiness of multiple vehicles is in fact quantifiable. The methods are not perfect and different tests give slightly different results, but in a crash the 15 year old Geo Metro is many times more likely to kill it’s occupants than is a similar aged Volvo 240. The rate at which various vehicles are involved in accidents is also thoroughly documented. It is debatable how much of the data is due to the vehicles and how much it says about the buyers, but the data is there. A new Corvette is much more likely to end up in an accident than is a new minivan.
The naysayers remind me of all the sturm-und-drang debate about seat belts in the 1970s. Countless old school die-hards used the same kind of arguments as to why they refused to wear the darned things that we are seeing here today in a slightly different context. I was just a teen then and had many a frustrating conversation with those of my parents generation about the need to wear seat belts and the wisdom of recycling soda bottles. Moms caught on pretty quick, some dads … not so fast.