Why Automotive Crash Tests Are Misleading
http://www.esmartarticles.com/articles/81422/1/Why-Automotive-Crash-Tests-Are-Misleading/Page1.html
Anna Disney
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Published on March 16th, 2010
Crash tests are conducted in the United States by the NHTSA (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) The tests are known as the NCAP (New Car Assessment Program)
Crash tests are conducted in the United States by the NHTSA (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). The tests are known as the NCAP (New Car Assessment Program). They entail crashing a car head-on into a fixed barrier (the equivalent of a brick wall) at 57 km/h (35 mph). The cars are mounted on a rail-type system, and the two front passengers are instrumented dummies with sensors attached to different points on their 'bodies' which permit the laboratory engineers to translate the stress into the effect the crash would have on real human beings.
The engineers also study the effects on the car's structures to see how they behave in this test that approximates a real-life head-on collision between two cars at about 90 km/h.
These tests go beyond what safety standards require but they are, in the hopes of the NHTSA, a standard by which real-life passenger car safety on the highway can be measured. In reality, these tests are more of an academic exercise than a simulation of real life.
Here are some arguments why:
Only a small percentage of highway accidents actually involve direct head-on collisions. In the real world, collisions happen at an angle. A car structure behaves very differently when hit at an angle to when it is hit head-on i.e., the chance of severe damage and injury to the passengers is much greater in the former instance.
The NCAP tests simulate a collision into a fixed barrier, which is also equivalent to that real-world collision mentioned above. But it only applies to a collision between two cars of identical weight and size. This also rarely happens in the real world, where subcompact cars collide with trucks, and so on. The laws of physics are inflexible; it will always be the smaller object that suffers, regardless of how good its engineering is.
The dummies used in the tests are the engineers' idea of what a human being is like. The technology is remarkably sophisticated but, for obvious reasons, no one has tried to run two tests on a particular car - one with dummies and one with real people - to see if the results would be identical.
Now that the Americans have different safety standards for occupant restraints, such as the installation of automatic seatbelts and air bags. Even a small change in a seemingly minor thing like the point where the shoulder belt attaches to the car's structure can make the difference between an instrument dummy sustaining a ‘fatal’ injury and ‘surviving’ unscathed.
In other words, the crash test results we hear so much about are a poor reflection of what might happen in our cars on real roads. The kinds of statistics that reveal far more are the ones dealing with the insurance companies' experiences with their clients in the day-to-day world.
In the United States, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research body funded by the insurance industry, compiles yearly statistics on accident claim frequency and magnitude on all popular car models. These are all the strange accidents that make up the yearly roster of struck telephone poles, roll-overs, head-on collisions, sideswipes, and so on. The results, year after year, are perfectly predictable: the small cars lose and the big cars win.
Large sedans and station wagons come up with reassuringly low accident injury frequencies year after year. Subcompact cars and small sportsters come out worst. Why? There are two primary reasons:
It's those laws of physics again: vehicles of the same size rarely collide, nor do collisions happen at right angles. The smaller vehicle loses every time.
Younger, less experienced, and often less cautious drivers tend, by and large, to drive the small cars and the sporty cars. The average age for drivers of full-size cars is much higher. It's not hard to see why the large cars fare better.
Because of these results, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has for several years come down hard on small cars, but this is not the answer in a world of dwindling natural resources, urban gridlock and tight parking. Rather, we should simply buy the car we need, drive carefully, and maintain it well. When all cars on the road get smaller, the discrepancies in the results will slowly diminish, making the roads safer for all concerned.
The engineers also study the effects on the car's structures to see how they behave in this test that approximates a real-life head-on collision between two cars at about 90 km/h.
These tests go beyond what safety standards require but they are, in the hopes of the NHTSA, a standard by which real-life passenger car safety on the highway can be measured. In reality, these tests are more of an academic exercise than a simulation of real life.
Here are some arguments why:
Only a small percentage of highway accidents actually involve direct head-on collisions. In the real world, collisions happen at an angle. A car structure behaves very differently when hit at an angle to when it is hit head-on i.e., the chance of severe damage and injury to the passengers is much greater in the former instance.
The NCAP tests simulate a collision into a fixed barrier, which is also equivalent to that real-world collision mentioned above. But it only applies to a collision between two cars of identical weight and size. This also rarely happens in the real world, where subcompact cars collide with trucks, and so on. The laws of physics are inflexible; it will always be the smaller object that suffers, regardless of how good its engineering is.
The dummies used in the tests are the engineers' idea of what a human being is like. The technology is remarkably sophisticated but, for obvious reasons, no one has tried to run two tests on a particular car - one with dummies and one with real people - to see if the results would be identical.
Now that the Americans have different safety standards for occupant restraints, such as the installation of automatic seatbelts and air bags. Even a small change in a seemingly minor thing like the point where the shoulder belt attaches to the car's structure can make the difference between an instrument dummy sustaining a ‘fatal’ injury and ‘surviving’ unscathed.
In other words, the crash test results we hear so much about are a poor reflection of what might happen in our cars on real roads. The kinds of statistics that reveal far more are the ones dealing with the insurance companies' experiences with their clients in the day-to-day world.
In the United States, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research body funded by the insurance industry, compiles yearly statistics on accident claim frequency and magnitude on all popular car models. These are all the strange accidents that make up the yearly roster of struck telephone poles, roll-overs, head-on collisions, sideswipes, and so on. The results, year after year, are perfectly predictable: the small cars lose and the big cars win.
Large sedans and station wagons come up with reassuringly low accident injury frequencies year after year. Subcompact cars and small sportsters come out worst. Why? There are two primary reasons:
It's those laws of physics again: vehicles of the same size rarely collide, nor do collisions happen at right angles. The smaller vehicle loses every time.
Younger, less experienced, and often less cautious drivers tend, by and large, to drive the small cars and the sporty cars. The average age for drivers of full-size cars is much higher. It's not hard to see why the large cars fare better.
Because of these results, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has for several years come down hard on small cars, but this is not the answer in a world of dwindling natural resources, urban gridlock and tight parking. Rather, we should simply buy the car we need, drive carefully, and maintain it well. When all cars on the road get smaller, the discrepancies in the results will slowly diminish, making the roads safer for all concerned.