Jalopnik: crash test dummies

How Important Is Crash Test Performance To You?

Matt Hardigree — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:45:00 EDT

Andy "Too Short" Stoy reported today on the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration plan to revise crash test ratings in a last-ditch effort to ~~stay even remotely relevant~~ educate drivers. Assuming they suddenly put forth harsher standards, would that impact your buying decisions? And while you probably wouldn't buy an Elantra if it got two stars, you probably wouldn't buy an Elantra anyways. What if it was your dream car and affordable? Would you think twice? Just how badly would your perfect car have to perform for you to walk away from a sweet deal?

Given the stories some of you have told about your current and former rides, it's clear safety isn't the primary concern, but it's up there somewhere. Some of you have families. Some of you have dreams. Some of you still haven't seen Paris. What's the tipping point? How much straw before the camel's back is broken and you're afraid you're going to follow its example?

Federal Crash Test Ratings To Be Updated: We All Drive Death Traps Again

Andrew Stoy — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:20:00 EDT

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NAMBLA) is updating their star ranking system for vehicle safety for the first time since it was introduced in 1994. After 14 years of manufacturers designing for the ratings, along with advancements in active and passive safety systems, the scores had become meaningless — nearly every vehicle scored a four- or five-star ranking in 2007 (with a few notable exceptions). What's changing and when after the jump.

NHTSA will introduce a new side-impact pole test designed to simulate wrapping a vehicle around a tree, which should be both useful for safety comparison shopping as well as extremely entertaining to watch. Front crash tests will also now score knee, hip and thigh injuries and add a crash test dummy representing a small woman sitting in the front passenger seat.

The fun part? Rather than providing individual frontal and side-impact ratings, NHTSA's made themselves up a formula to combine everything into a single rating of up to five stars, much like the scoring system found in Europe and Japan.

Automakers have until 2010 to get everything up to par, so if you're a laid-off structural engineer in Dee-troit expect your phone to start ringing in about five minutes. [Detroit News]

Brilliant! Chinese Brilliance BS6 Sedan Crumples Like A Coke Can In German Crash Test

Ray Wert — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:15:00 EDT

While the folks at the German ADAC institute may not have gotten quite as much of a laugh (if you don't believe us — wait until about 15 seconds into the video here) out of their recent test of the new Brilliance BS6 — the recent Chinese entry into the Euro luxe import sedan market — as EuroNCAP got out of the test of Jiangling Motors' Landwind SUV back in 2005, General Tso's new hotness still didn't fare so well. OK, that's being nice — actually, the BS6 crumpled up like a coke can and received only one star for the 40 mph offset frontal crash test. First China came for our cats, then our teeth, and now the make-a-buck yet socially-socialist country's coming after our knees and our skulls. – Ray Wert

[Autobild via Autoblog]