Wednesday May 14 2008
A couple weeks ago I wrote about my experience tooling around town in my friend’s new Smart car. I’m a true fan. I love the gas mileage, clean design, and small footprint. However as I noted the immediate reactionary comments I heard were about safety due to the compact size.
CNN reports that the Smartcar received high marks for front and side collisions, and except for less than standard whiplash protection was considered a very safe vehicle overall.
Being far from a crash test authority I take issue with the line “bigger and heavier is always better.” You may feel safer driving a school bus or garbage truck, but how many SUVs flip over on freeways and superarterials each year? Big and heavy without the experience and knowledge to manage such a vehicle cancels out any safety factor you gain by driving it.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The ultra-tiny Smart ForTwo earned top marks in side and front crash tests, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said Wednesday. The two-seat car did not earn the Institute’s Top Safety Pick designation, however, because it didn’t earn top marks for whiplash protection.
The ForTwo is the smallest car the IIHS has ever tested. “All things being equal in safety, bigger and heavier is always better,” said institute president Adrian Lund in an statement. “But among the smallest cars, the engineers at Smart did their homework and designed a high level of safety into a very small package.”
May 15th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Because of the small size of these cars, the designers can dedicate more of the weight to steel and support beams in the frame - making them relatively safe cars.
For most small accidents you’d likely be ok, for larger ones in general it all comes down to physics.
F=MA (M being mass, the more of it in the equation, the greater the force).