He now makes that same long commute in my grandmother’s ‘90 Honda Civic. I was, and continue to be, very concerned about the safety of an 18-year old subcompact in a world full of soccer mom’s driving massive SUVs. I’m trying to talk him into a new Civic.

My first car back in 1990 was an ‘85 Honda CRX. At the time, I didn’t give the size/safety of it a moment of thought. Today, I doubt I’d venture onto a highway in it. My Mazda3 is about as small as I care to go!

My driving style is I find pretty defensive. I will do anything not to ride next to someone. If I have to (traffic) then I make sure I can see the driver’s mirror and that he/she should be able to see me. In short I drive like I’m on a motorcycle – another mode of transport where people have not seen me several times.

On the interstate the CR-X really shined IF semi-trucks were not in the mix. My face was at about the same level as their hubcaps and I suspect I could have passed under their trailers without much trouble. I drove like they NEVER saw me and never had any trouble.

Remember one night when I was traveling from VA to TN and found a tandem trailer with a sleepy driver. He was all over the road – especially the 2nd trailer. Dropped back quite a ways and then passed him at 90 mph to minimize my time next to his rig. I doubt my car would have caused more than a bump to him.

I think we need less large vehicle and more compacts on the road today (and for the past 20 years) to wean ourselves from this oil addiction courtesy of the Arab teats. Efficient small cars would take us a long way so in that way I welcome high fuel prices. Compacts are also the easiest chassis to use for EVs so again I want more compacts on the road. And small cars vs small cars in a crash is safer.

Saw where oil took another big leap upwards today…

Euro NCAP recently started testing trucks and the results are frightening:

So, what’s REALLY safer, esp when you add poor handling, greater propensity to rolloever and the like into the mix?

I drive a F250 Diesel truck and an old Merc 300SD.

As good old Henry said, Nothing beats the inches.

Are small cars really unsafe?
Or are small cars statistically unsafe because they are statistically driven more often by young, inexperienced drivers?

The best safety statistics belong to minivans. Probably because they are driven by the proverbial soccer moms and not by speeding teens…

I know, I know, if you get run over by a monster truck, it’s not great to be in a tiny car. But that’s only one part of safety statistics.

It seems to me that a small car with a very strong frame and airbags all around ought to be pretty safe.

I guess the answer is to make small lightweight cars that have more surface area to absorb impact. Weight may help you if you hit something lighter, but it looks like from research and data that it’s all about the crumple zones. If all large vehicles had more volume dedicated to absorb impact, would that not benefit everyone? In a crash, you not only benefit from your own crumple area, but also that of the vehicle that you are colliding with. On the other hand, this means more weight penalties, cars bigger than they need to be (parking and maneuverability become worse), and entry/exit might be kind of weird if you have 15 extra inches on the sides of a car dedicated to impact.

edit: Actually the real answer will be for cars to be computer controlled and self driving. This is the way to make small cars as safe to the occupants as massive ones. It’s a little sad, but we should still be able to get our kicks on track day.

Is it crazy to want to level the field to dissuade people from buying armored vehicles so that they can kill other people? I just don’t know how it would be possible.

I figure going down in a car crash is one of the best ways to go out, anyway. You probably wont even know that it happened or feel any pain. Sounds a lot better to me than being told that I have cancer and 6 months to live.

A year ago there was an article in the NYT stating real world data showing the death rate in a Ford Excursion to be 5 times that of a Toyota RAV4. So much for size superiority. I really wonder how much of that is due to assholes behind the wheel…most Excursion drivers seem to suffer from SPS (smallpenissyndrome).

No fault insurance is a subsidy for larger, heavier vehicles, especially SUVs and trucks. People driving light cars subsidize the ’safety’ gained by those driving heavier cars.

As a practical matter, no fault makes sense, but payment of the total damages in a two vehicle crash should be assessed by the ratio of the vehicle weights. Better yet would be to look at the velocity of the crash and taking the ratio of the kenetic energy each vehicle contributed to the crash.

I suspect, the result would be a significant increase in the cost of insuring big vehicles — making them pay a fairer share of their ‘contribution’ in an accident. It just might might dissaude some people from buying insurance (in the form of a heavy vehicle) at the perverse cost of placing others at greater risk.

You really do have to look at specific cars.

SUV’s are also less manoeuvreable, more likely to roll over and are more aggressive to other vehicles (bumper heights, less “crumple” zones.

That is, SUV’s are only more safe because they transfer some of the risk of injury or death in an accident to other road users. In doing so, they increase the total collective risk of road trauma.

People who buy SUV’s for safety are either ill-informed or belong to what I think of as the “f-u” school of road safety.

Absolutely the truth. Remember when 4000 lbs was the “big, safe vehicle”? The real problem in most cases is the disparity in weights and ride heights that dictate who comes out best in a crash. Couple the fact that smaller vehicles (smaller prices) are often driven by young drivers. This alone makes small cars at a statistical disadvantage. I recall reading once that 2 door Dodge Shadows had a rollover rate that was 4 times that of the 4 door variety. The only difference? The age of the drivers. It seems that yesterday’s “safe” car has been outclassed by today’s “safe” car because it has gained 1000 pounds of unnecessary blubber…blubber that degrades active safety, i.e. proper handling…

“PartNew research from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia shows that children riding in SUVs have similar injury risks to children who ride in passenger cars. The study, published today in the journal Pediatrics, found that an SUV’s increased risk of rolling over during a crash offset the safety benefits associated with larger, heavier-weight vehicles.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060106133246.htm

While I wouldn’t drive a microcar myself, I’ve always driven a small car. I can’t tell how many accidents I’ve avoided in my small cars over the years, but it is close to one time every time I drive. That is when a car, usually an SUV, makes a sudden maneuver into my path. It happens pretty much every day. Anyhow SUVs that are used to get groceries suck. They suck suck suck. If I was king I would make them illegal. I would only allow them on dirt roads and to and from construction sites. Fortunately I’m not king because I would also abolish speed limits and make a lot of other questionable decisions.

But seriously, wouldn’t a better study be not to just look at how well a vehicle does in an accident, but how often vehicles get into accidents? I’ve never driven an SUV (except as a rental) and in 20 years of driving, never been in an accident as the driver (plenty as a passenger).

I based my claim on this information from fueleconomy.gov:

1988 Civic CRX HF 1.5L, manual transmission: 41 MPG city, 50 highway after adjusting for the new methods. The original EPA numbers in 1988 for that car were 50/56.

“Aren’t small cars more dangerous in some part because there are large cars?” In part, perhaps, but as long as the highways are chock full of commercial and personal trucks as well as phone poles and bridge abutments you can’t solve the problem by simply mandating that all personal vehicles be small.

“The Jetta has among the least number of associated driver deaths per mile” Part of that may also be driver demographics as well as the Jetta’s safety engineering.

I think part of the solution is to ban anything over about 3200 lbs

If you like the jetta, why do you want to ban it (and every other current VW)?

Most accidents are one-car accidents. And you’re much more likely to get into one of those in an SUV that handles like the QE2 than in a car that responds well. A lot of Americans would rather drive a truck every day on the off chance that they’ll be hit by an idiot, than actually have fun driving. Since I’m not paid to drive, I prefer to enjoy it.

You’re best off in a Crown Vic or New Taurus (i.e. Ford Five Hundred), or equivalent. You’re also getting better fuel economy than you’d get in most pickups or SUVs, as well as posing less of a danger to the drivers of small cars.

If you’re convinced you’re a good, attentive driver, you might score more economy and nimble handling in a smaller car, but self-rating one’s driving ability is largely a fool’s errand. (Where was it, again, that they claim that all their children are above average?)

Overall, road fatalities in the US have been steadily declining when measured both against total miles driven and against the size of the resident population — even as we drive more miles per year, we suffer fewer fatalities per million people than we used to. Personally, I get the safest car I can, and then drive it into the ground over many, many years. Others I know trade in cars more frequently, and cite improving safety features as a reason to do so. I always figured that the money I save by holding cars longer can be spent on more effective means of preserving my health (gym membership, anyone?), but if you have more money than you really need anyway, why not buy more automotive safety by upgrading more often?

In a single-vehicle accident, those roof-mounted crumple zones of light trucks and SUVs combined with their high center-of-gravity should be killing people left & right. Goodness knows Ford & Firestone did their part for the good of the planet!

In multi-vehicle accidents the sheer mass of the average SUV will easily crush the occupants of a Prius or Civic. Again, the auto makers are helping the planet.

Throw in morons and cell phones and we should be saving the planet any day now.

–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org

Note to RF: The above is meant to be read as irony.

I think part of the solution is to ban anything over about 3200 lbs, and/or make insurance rates very sensitive to size–the big ones should pay more since they endanger everyone else.