The SmartCar is an excellent city car. Places like NYC where a person is in slow traffic for the majority of your trip is a good application of the Smart.

Around here (TN cities) I spend 5 mins in slow downtown traffic and then I’m on some bypass or loop interstate that gets me to the other side of the city. The amount of time in the Smart would never be a problem. My trips are time-wise short enough that anything with a/c would be plenty comfortable from a 20 year old Datsun up to a BMW or Caddy.

Its that high speed “mixing with big traffic” where everybody is running along at close quarters and 75 mph and then somebody does something stupid and everybody has to slam on the brakes. Will the big service truck behind me stop in time? Will the over-done lady in the Escalade yammering away on her cellphone look out her passenger window and see me? Will the 60,000 pound semi-truck hauling steel that I would prefer was hauled on a train instead even notice if he hits me?

Going slower than the rest of the traffic helps to a point. Everybody has to go around me b/c I am running the speed limit certainly makes them aware of me. Going TOO slow makes the road dangerous for all of us as everyone is switching lanes and jockeying around me. Rolling-roadblocks come to mind.

I LOVE small cars. I wish the whole country were driving small cars too but they aren’t. We’re not ONLY in the city around here and unfortunately our interstates are occupied by huge trucks and huge SUVs and everybody seems to have a phone call in progress all the time.

Fortunately I don’t have to leave my small town between the TN cities often and here a Smart would be excellent. Low speeds, urban traffic and not much highway time ever. Of course the short distances make most anything affordable MPG-wise.

“Hitting a wall at 70MPH? Isn’t that about the speed that the S-class Mercedes carrying Princess Di was going when it hit the wall?”

Umm – The facts of that accident were: Princess Di was not wearing a seatbelt nor were 2 other occupants. They all died. The bodyguard upfront was belted-in and survived.
From the numerous pictures I have seen the S-Class Mercedes took the impact very well and the crumple zones upfront worked as intended. The unbelted passengers colliding with the car (also known as the secondary impact) is what killed them.

The IIHS reports loss data that includes an index for injuries, so this information does exist.

http://www.iihs.org/research/hldi/composite_intro.html

There’s no conspiracy against testing methods and data. Governments throughout the world test cars in similar ways.

Obviously, crash tests can’t anticipate every possible scenario. But increasing the standards will create more negative test results, which will result in higher standards, which in turn will result in higher costs and R&D requirements imposed on the automakers. And I’m pretty sure that the automakers don’t want even more and higher standards, if they can avoid them.

At least, if not faster. An amazing testimony to that vehicle that the one properly seat-belted occupant in that crash survived.

You hit the nail on the head Kevin. As long as they hide the true facts, simple minded people will believe in the fantasy star ratings.

If it were to hit head on with an SUV, both traveling at 25mph, the SUV would completely reverse the direction of travel of a Smart, nearly tripling the tested impact forces, at that point it would be a slaughter of the smart occupants. The smart would feel a 90mph impact force, the SUV about 25mph. And owners are driving them thinking they are ’safe’. Not even getting into it being a very poor value for the price in the first place.

I have always wondered why there is no standard of impact energy in crash testing(probably because it would be a horror show for smaller vehicles), nor any record of reported injuries per accident for vehicles in the real world. I have seen many ‘5-star’ small cars with the owners having to be cut out of them when the other larger vehicle has an unscathed driver standing on the side of the road watching.

In the name of balanced reporting bunter 1 its the same stars as a Tundra.
Now in the real world outside of the lab in real conditions with real human bodies.I think I’ll take my chances with the Trailblazer or for that matter the Tundra.

The TrailBlazer folds like a cheap suitcase, if I remember correctly. GM’s newer cars do much better.

Heck, even the updated old-as-dirt W-Body (GP/LaCrosse/Impala) do considerably better.

Size doesn’t mean as much as the uninformed consumer thinks in a vehicle crash.

The other thing that they barely mention in the video is the lower part of the cabin. In the brief shot of the footwell, it seems that even if the driver were to survive, he/she would certainly be legless.

Everyone has a self-interest in buying a vehicle safe for themselves in a crash, but nobody has an interest in buying a vehicle that is safe to others in a crash. That leads me to the conclusion that the government has crash-testing all wrong. The government should mandate that vehicles cause only a certain low threshold of damage to other vehicles in a crash.

The Smart is also more expensive than one might think. It’s nice they put some of that high MSRP into safety though.

I wasn’t arguing that the car was unsafe. But no car is going to perform very well hitting a solid barrier at 70 mph, and the commentary in the video could be misleading. What’s most relevant is the safety of the driver and passengers, and that wasn’t determined in their test.

the new smart got 4 stars in the euro ncap test

That test is conducted at 40 mph. Not that I have a problem with that, but 70 creates substantially different results from 40. Fortunately, very few accidents involve collisions into fixed objects at a 70 mph closing speed, so there won’t be many real world situations like the one in the video.

http://www.euroncap.com/tests/smart_fortwo_2007/303.aspx

From here, it looked as if the steering column would have gone into the chest of the driver. I’m thinking that you’ve got a dead body in the nicely preserved driver’s seat.