B D HEMI

The main thing that people forget when buying these small "coffins" is despite the so called good crash ratings these tiny cars get , eg: honda civic , toyota yaris, smart car , etc... is that they will never end up crashing into the same car on the road .Therefore you are likely to run into or get runover by a larger vehicle , and at that point it's game over . Is saving gas worth more than potentially getting hurt badly or possibly end up dead ?
B D HEMI

MGS4

the video

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=mz-s1sIoLhU

marshmallo

Engineers are quite adept at tuning their products to do well on certain kinds
of tests... I would not take a chance in one of those either. Even when
I was driving a Matrix rental a while ago I had the sense that I was being
bullied quite a bit on the roads.

BCP43002

I think if you get hit by anything bigger then a motorcycle your will better be updated. The car looks like two doors on wheels. Maybe the advanced safety features is a soccer ball that inflates just before impact. Then the other guy yells GOALLLLLLL!!!!!!

bizzy928

The IIHS randomly buys a car from the dealership and tests it for the reasons mentioned above.

CK6Speed

iTrader: (1)

That is not exactly what he means. He is not talking about building a "Ringer" crash test car. He is saying if the engineers know what crash tests the government or other facility does, how they go about it, and what instruments they use to perform these test, they can engineer the car to achieve the best possible results if subjected to that or similar tests. Kind of like if you know what specific frequency noise is interfering with an electronic equipment, you don't have to design a noise filter that filters all signals. Just design a filter that filters that specific frequency. Now, not saying this is what these car manufacturers are doing, but manufacturers do build their cars based on data and feedback from such crash results in order to improve the safety of their cars. Over all that is actually a good thing since generally the lab crash test supposed to replicate most real world tests.

gengar

40/45 under the old EPA rating, 33/41 under the new rating. To put it in perspective, the Yaris is something like 29/35 for the new rating. Better, but not that much better.

Of course, the smart can't compete with the Prius, which is 48/45 even under the new EPA rating. The Civic hybrid should be pretty close to the Prius as well.

geko29

It's trivially easy. Crashing any car into a wall at 30mph is approximately the same as crashing it into an identical oncoming car, also traveling at 30mph. Then they simply have standards for deceleration and impact on the occupants, plus deformation of the passenger compartment. If those metrics are below a certain part (as they seem to be), then the fortwo is considered very safe for its size/weight class, and those ratings will hold even when there are other vehicles in its class.

mmarshall

Its good mileage, though, is tempered by the fact that it uses premium gas and has a transmission that makes the car lunge like a bronco on upshifts.

Here is my recent review of a Smart for Two:

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...+smart+for+two

Nextourer

Guess that's what you do in your Hemi? Does a rally driver get squished when he rolls over and smashes into a tree? same concept except the rollbars are integrated LOL.

ohh mmarshall, I forgot to tell you. I got one lol. I do agree with the shifts (1st-2nd is just awful when it was new) but they have gotten smoother quite quickly. I was kinda surprised cause I thought I might have to deal with it for the break-in period lol.

Oh and it just put $26 in the tank, 275km. Not exactly the best mileage but it's the first tank and the dealer AND the shipping guys have been moving it around.

LexFather

I can see myself driving a SMART around town. On the freeway, no way.

mmarshall

So you got one. Congragulations.

Drive it carefully, though, and don't push it in the corners. You know by now, I'm sure, that due to its extremely short wheelbase, narrowness, and height, the center of gravity is extremely high and that it is no sports car.

The metal and durability used for some of the interior and exterior hardware is quite impressive, though. More cars today should be like that.

If you want one, PM me with your mailing address and I'll send you a bottle of SCRATCH-OUT for the paint

rai

this is the thing.

Lets call the Smart 2000 lbs with a driver and lets call a SUV 6000 lbs with a driver.

if they collide head on at say 30. The Smart driver will decelerate much faster in fact will go backwards. So it will be like going from 30 mph to -10 mph while the SUV driver will decelerate less only chage of 20 mph (for example). So it would seem like the Smart was in a 40 mph crash and the SUV in a 20 mph crash.

I am just making the numbers up but that's the idea where the larger car wins. It's not saying the Smart does not do a good job of absorbing the impact with crumple zones etc. but the physice of the impact will greatly favor the larger car.

I have seen data where a larger car is (something like) 4x safer than a very small car. I may dig the data up later.

It will be nicer in the future when we have less massive trucks and SUVs and large cars/vans so that the weight difference is not as much but right now the Smarts are very small for the US market

mmarshall

Exactly. This is correct. When a golf ball collides with a bowling ball, it's not hard to predict which one will react more. That is just simple physics and kinetic energy, which kids learn in the 5th or 6th grade.

4TehNguyen

iTrader: (1)

mileage is disappointing for something of that lightweightness