Unfortunately, maybe we should still cry a tear because we already know they'll all more than likely end up living their miserable lives getting their passenger seats chewed up by the tiny dogs of their celebutard owners on the way to a Beverly Hills Botox parlor. Still, maybe we'll be seeing more crash pictures — from the Paparazzo — just as soon as the celebutards get their hands on 'em. [Autogespot via AutoBlog, CzechFerrari.cz]

So, you know, it might be a good idea just giving it a once-over before you do.
[via Bridge To Gantry]

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?

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]

Apparently this happened along some tollway in New York; no word on the involvement of Larry, Curly and Mo. [Loqu]

Further measures the NHRA is considering include:
- What might be done to reduce engine failures
- Altering parachute mounting techniques and materials as well as identifying a parachute material that could be more fire resistant
- Exploring whether there is a way to increase brake efficiency when cars lose downforce due to the loss of the body
- Analyzing additional methods that might be developed at the top end of the race track to help arrest runaway vehicles
- Considering whether current speeds should be further limited or reduced to potentially improve safety

So what do you think of this temporary change, and the prospect of future changes? Certainly there's inherent danger that comes with drag racing such beastly machines, so should safety come first or be sacrificed in the quest for all-out speed? [NHRA]

Nobody seems to have been hurt here, but there are definitely some bruised egos. It's worth the trip over to the BBC website to check out the video, as it's rife with funny British words and pronunciations like "sa-LEE-ka," talk of bonnets, and amusing Irish accents. We're going to hell, we know. [BBC]

The simple answer is "because the IIHS is a consortium of insurance agencies." When massive damage occurs in something like an underride accident (where the car goes under the truck), they have to pay for fixing things. The remarkable part of the article in Automotive News was the complete lack of the term "survivability" in any of the IIHC's arguments. Our favorite part?

The insurance institute contends that its new request is backed up with fresh research showing that vehicle damage could be dramatically reduced with better alignment of bumpers between cars and trucks.

Photo credit DieselPowerMag.com

"...[the driver] was heading northbound from corner six at Mosport. After this corner is a long straightaway and at some point his vehicle became airborne at an extremely high rate of speed and rolled end-over-end. The driver was transported to Bowmanville hospital where he succumbed to his injuries."

"They haven't officially announced the driver's name, but it is believed to be Dino Crescentini, owner of the vehicle. For those old enough to remember (not me, as I'm only 20), the car he was driving was a Wolf-Dallara Can Am car, formerly driven by Gilles Villeneuve.

At the time of the incident, I was in between stints at Mosport's kart track (located at the end of the straightaway, near where this happened). From our viewpoint, you could see parts of the car in air, as it was apparently barrel rolling towards the corner. The car settled just out of view, in a cloud of dust and smoke. Sad to see a great guy, a great car, a great event, and great day end like this."

Photo Credit: Joe Tobasco @ Flickr

Second Runner Up

Why not put SLR Guy into a commercial for herpes medication? What a genius choice Mike, something about the expression of our hero makes this seem like such a more realistic ad. For your efforts, there are three Ford Racing beverage cozies with your name on 'em.

Runner Up

Molotov, sometimes your little chops of genius are under appreciated, but we like em. This one took an entirely different direction from all the other entries. Where's SLR Guy, totally brilliant. You get a gold star Ford Racing ball cap.

First Place

When it popped up in the second of our SLR Guy posts, Dr Danger's "SLR Jones and the Temple of Douche" was practically made for the win. It was skillful, it was funny and it was creative. Very well done sir. You are the winner of the prize Ford Mustang FR500C model.

Thanks for all the entries that came in, even though some of them were disturbing and might haunt our nightmares. We really enjoyed this one and we'll be looking for more opportunities for you crazies to display your chops in the future. You winners out there shoot me an email at ben@jalopnik.com with your address so we can get those prizes out to you.

The brilliance or this is the combination of the also hilarious "Enzo Dude" and the horrifyingly famous scene from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off".

Any time Jar-Jar "Douche" Binks shows up in a 'shop contest, it's practically a shoo-in for funny, we liked it because it tells you all need to know about the character in one expression.

We actually think George Lucas and Steven Spielberg should consider changing the name of their latest effort and digitally "enhancing" it with the SLR Guy character. It would probably end up better than what we saw in theaters.

We like this one both for the topical nature or the pending Deathrace movie, but also respect the quality of the chop itself, note the fine matching of shading — nicely done.

This one takes advantage of the big Top Gear USA news and how we didn't really notice how Tanner Foust looks shockingly like SLR Guy. Clever... very clever.

And then there's the famous wreck of the Stefan Eriksson, the Enzo which started the Save the Enzo's wave, the most famous supercar wreck in recent memory. SLR Guy with the inevitable entry.

The "Icy Hot Stunaz," SLR Guy. Match made in heaven.

Does the SLR Guy jump the shark? Maybe, but we loved the combo of the Fonz and SLR Guy's expression. Inspired work fine commenter.

This one caught us completely off guard. Combine the childhood joy of Where's Waldo with the adult joy of ridiculing people on the internet.

Okay, maybe we're showing our nerd colors here, but Hans SLR here had us laughing for quite a bit. That business of overlaying characters from a galaxy far, far away is pretty amusing.

Oh, so rich. So much comedy here. The perfect combination of "aw damn" with "I shoulda known better."

This is a fabulous use of words on a page. Of course Chitty Chitty Douche Bag makes sense, just say it out loud. You can't help but chuckle.

We're amazed with this one in that our intrepid 'shopper managed to fill the foreground of the original image with the sweaty, snarly image of el-Wert-o during his first ever appearance on CNBC. Amazing!

This one cracks us up if for now other reason than the obvious pandering and brilliant use of Mark's staff photo. Also, look, there's Matt! It's like they were actually there.

How could we not include SLR Guy with everyone's favorite Nazi-themed orgy aficionado? Oh Max Mosley, what would we do without you?

Oh, and what about those prizes? We got a pile of swag from Ford at the Ford Racing Invitational, and we're more than happy to pass it along. How about a limited edition, 1 of 500, commemorative 2005 Grand-Am Champion Ford Mustang FR500C model, new in box for first place. Second will be getting a very nice Ford Racing ball cap and third will get a selection of three Ford Racing beverage cozies. See the gallery below. Okay kids, that's it, vote early and vote often, and congratulations to the finalists.

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The folks over there seem to have hit on the "put all the internet memes together" idea. Obviously, we love the brilliant "church lady" option, but the others aren't shabby either. Kudos to those clever Vortexers. [The Car Lounge At VWVortex]

F, of course, is force. It is the result of one car hurtling into another. It's what acts on the human attached to the inside of the car by way of seatbelt. When cars crash into each other there are an incredible number of variables, not the least of which are angles, bumper heights, braking forces etc., but the ones that can be controlled are the ones which have the biggest impact in that equation.

When crashing, you want to minimize the amount of speed involved; slamming on the brakes is a great way to do that. Minimizing mass is going to be a tougher one, considering your car is pretty heavy to start out, and you both won't have a lot of time to jettison stuff while yelling "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit." But what about that time thing? What if you could stretch out the amount of time it takes from the start of the accident to the end? This is what crumple zones do.

The cars in the above gallery are designed to survive an accident, not to protect their occupants. In some of the scenarios, the car looks not too much worse for the wear, but the drivers likely suffered significant injuries that would have been avoided in a modern car. The cars that turned into mangled messes probably did the same to their drivers. No car can ever be completely safe; even though the new ones don't look tough, you're way better off in 'em.

Engineers design crash zones to fail along a predictable path using varying materials and construction techniques. As a result, predictable bending, breaking, and stretching occurs. These failure events act like a giant shock absorber sitting in front of your dash, "soaking up" force. If you play around with the above equation, you can see that stretching out the time, even by fractions of seconds, has a remarkable effect on the forces transmitted to the passengers. Of course, this is an extremely simplified look at why cars turn into play-doh during an accident these days. But at least it gives you a fighting chance of explaining why the next time your folks crank up the "back in my day" speech.

Photo credit to Complete All

"lost control of the 205mph £330,000 ($643,600) supercar just after he left home with wife Linda yesterday."

It SPUN through 180 degrees and HURTLED backwards through a wooden fence and a thick hawthorn hedge before coming to rest in a children's playground.

One witness claimed Anthony...lost it as he showed off to onlookers by revving the engine of the Carrera GT - which can do 0-62mph in 3.9 seconds.

Design constraints, like the need to lower the door window, mean car frames cannot be built with the beam already in place. Like airbags, once activated, the brace would need a trip to the workshop to be reset, but the team are working on making the brace retractable.

Hooray, safety! [New Scientist via Giz]

FIVE euro-ncap STARS FOR THE NEW Superb

The new Škoda Superb has received five stars in independent crash tests performed by Euro-NCAP. One of the factors to have contributed to the highest possible rating is a knee airbag. Commenting on the new Škoda Superb, Euro-NCAP points out that the protection of the occupants' knees and thighs is excellent.

The Superb has achieved the highest possible scores also in side impact and pole impact simulations, receiving 35 points for the protection of adults and 40 points for the protection of children. The quality of pedestrian protection is very high, too.

"The new Superb has been developed to provide the occupants with maximum possible safety. The Euro-NCAP results confirm that we have managed to produce a top-quality vehicle in terms of performance, user comfort, as well as safety, one of the key aspects from the customer's perspective, and I am indeed very pleased about that", said Dr. Eckhard Scholz, Škoda Auto Board Member responsible for Technical Development.

Standard equipment for the new Superb includes seven airbags and other top-level safety elements, such as a new-generation chassis that is more rigid than that of the vehicle's predecessor and front seats optimised to protect the occupants from cervical spine injuries. Optional equipment includes two additional airbags, an adaptive front lighting system, and more. The new Superb will go on sale in the UK in September.

So here's what happened (and he walked away with a broken collar bone from the seat belat and stitches from metal scraps flying!) he's an aspiring snowboarder and travels back and forth to Mammoth alot. A week ago Friday night he was northbound on the 395 just outside of Ridgecrest. Two semi's (singlefile) are headed towards him, just as he is adjacent to the grill on the 1st one the 2nd one pulls out into his lane to pass the 1st one! Thankfully he made the right choice and tried to go down the middle (inbetween the 2 trucks) and not dump it off in the right shoulder. The 2nd semi drove OVER his A4! The axles sheared off the semi and it toatalled also. As you can see from the pics, he is lucky to be alive, lucky he was driving a safe car, lucky he made the right choice, lucky he did not have a passenger. As you can imagine I was shocked, but so damn thankful he was in that car and not some other! Thank you Audi!!!

For instance, we're not huge on the fuel economy, which is just 38 mpg under ideal driving conditions. Drive any faster and the mileage drops even further. Then there's the price. Would you pay $18,500 for a fully loaded Smart convertible? It would be pointless to list the other vehicles you could have with that level of gas-gulpage for that price given that, if you're buying a ForTwo, you probably have a little more disposable income on your hands than most. And the speed? You'll get to 60 mph from a cold start in... well... bring a book. All that being said, we like the idea of a car we could park almost anywhere. It certainly has a unique look. And hey, 38 mpg isn't that bad. What say you?

Oh look, another Ferrari crash. Maybe we should have run this Monday when we were having our Maximum Ferrari Crash Morning but now that we look at it, maybe the owner of this 360 Modena just wanted to take it for a little swim. Or maybe he just couldn't find a car wash open late enough. [Autogespot]

FIRST INSTITUTE CRASH TESTS OF SMART CAR: DIMINUTIVE TWO-SEATER EARNS TOP RATINGS FOR PROTECTING PEOPLE IN FRONT & SIDE CRASHES

ARLINGTON, VA — The Smart car is getting a lot of attention for its small size and style, and now it's earning impressive crash test ratings. In recent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tests, the 2008 Smart Fortwo, the smallest car for sale in the US market, earned the top rating of good for front and side crash protection. Its seat/head restraints earned the second highest rating of acceptable for protection against whiplash in rear impacts.
Smart Fortwo is classified a microcar, meaning it's smaller even than minicars.Weighing about 1,800 pounds, the Smart is more than 3 feet shorter and almost 700 pounds lighter than a Mini Cooper.

It weighs about a third as much as one of the heaviest vehicles the Institute has tested, the BMW X5, a midsize SUV. As the price of fuel climbs and tougher federal fuel economy requirements kick in, auto companies are expected to introduce more small vehicles to the market. The Smart is the smallest car the Institute ever has tested.

"The big question from consumers is, 'How safe is it?'", says Institute president Adrian Lund. "All things being equal in safety, bigger and heavier is always better. But among the smallest cars, the engineers of the Smart did their homework and designed a high level of safety into a very small package."The Institute's test results generally demonstrate how well vehicles stack up against others of similar size and weight. Frontal ratings can't be compared
across weight classes, meaning a small car that earns a good rating isn't safer than a large car that's rated less than good.

"People base their buying decisions on a lot of factors," Lund says. "If you drive only in congested urban areas where speeds are low, a small car may be more practical than a big one. We conduct crash tests so people who want small cars can choose the ones that afford the best protection."The Smart has a crashworthy design for its size and is equipped with the latest safety gear, which is especially important in a small car. This vehicle's standard
equipment includes seat-mounted combination side airbags designed to protect both the heads and chests of the driver and passenger. Also standard is electronic stability control (ESC), called electronic stability program in the Smart. ESC helps drivers maintain control during emergency maneuvers or on slippery roads. It engages automatically when it senses vehicle instability, and Institute research has found that ESC lowers the risk of fatal single-vehicle crashes by about half.
Restraints do more of the work in frontal crashes: The Smart mostly lacks a front-end crush zone, which is a key component in reducing injury risk in serious frontal crashes.Typically, front-end structures are designed to crush and absorb crash energy, allowing occupant compartments to slow more gradually, ideally with little or no intrusion into drivers' survival space. Then a vehicle's safety belts and airbags slow occupants further and are designed to spread crash forces more evenly across people's bodies. The longer the front-end crush structure of a vehicle, the more gently occupants are slowed and thus protected from injury.

To compensate for the lack of front-end crush space, the Smart's restraint system does more of the work of absorbing energy as occupants "ride down" a crash.

"We recorded a high head acceleration when the driver dummy's head hit the steering wheel through the frontal airbag," Lund explains. This indicates the test dummy used up all of the available ride down room in the Smart's interior.

A stiff side structure and standard side airbags contributed to the Smart's good rating in the side test, which replicates a crash with a pickup truck or SUV. Injury forces recorded on the driver dummy's head, neck, torso, pelvis, and left leg all were low. However, the driver door unlatched during the crash. This confirms a finding of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's side test of a Smart released last month. The Institute downgraded the Smart's structural rating from good to acceptable, but the opening didn't appear to affect dummy movement during the test, and injury measures on the driver dummy were low. Still, doors shouldn't unlatch because in some crashes it could allow partial or complete occupant ejection, especially if an occupant is unbelted.

Small car safety: While small cars are safer now than before, so are large cars. In every category of passenger vehicle (car, SUV, or pickup truck), the risk of death is higher in crashes of smaller, lighter models. For vehicles 1-3 years old during 2006, minicars experienced 106 driver deaths per million registered vehicles compared with 69 driver deaths in large cars.

People often choose very light cars for fuel economy, but "you don't have to buy the smallest, lightest car to get one that's easy on fuel consumption," Lund points out. "The Toyota Prius, for example, earns good front and side crash test ratings. It gets better fuel economy than a microcar, but it's bigger and weighs more so we would expect it would be more protective in serious crashes."

How the Smart was evaluated: The Institute's frontal crashworthiness evaluation is based on results of a 40 mph frontal offset crash test. A vehicle's overall evaluation is based on measurements of intrusion into the occupant compartment, injury measures recorded on a Hybrid III dummy in the driver seat, and analysis of slow-motion film
to assess how well the restraint system controlled dummy movement during the test.

The side evaluation is based on performance in a crash test in which the side of a vehicle is struck by a barrier moving at 31 mph. The barrier represents the front end of a pickup or SUV. Ratings reflect injury measures recorded on an instrumented SID-IIs dummy in the driver seat, assessment of head protection countermeasures, and the vehicle's structural performance during the impact.

Rear crash protection is rated according to a two-step procedure. Starting points are measurements of head restraint geometry — the height of a restraint and its horizontal distance behind the back of the head of an average-size man. Seats with good or acceptable restraint geometry are tested dynamically using a dummy that measures forces on the neck. This test simulates a collision in which a stationary vehicle is struck in the rear at 20 mph. Seats without good or acceptable geometry are rated poor overall because they can't be positioned to protect many people.

Yesterday a co-worker of mine was involved in a motor vehicle accident while driving a Smart Car. Rumors were spreading around the office that he'd been hit by a SUV from behind which in turn drove him into a car.

That was WRONG!

Instead, he was hit from behind by a five ton delivery truck which served him like a tennis ball across the intersection to a cube van! He walked away with some minor abrasions from the airbags, and was quoted this morning as saying that he's "just a little achy". Is a Smart Car safe? You judge for yourself, but I think it faired pretty damn well.

Japan's Shizuoka province has a brand new way to spider your Ferrari F355. Leave your Sawzall at home, folks. Instead, slide it sideways under a highway restraining barrier. Just don't forget to duck. Seriously — how did the driver and passenger escape this wreck with their heads, shoulders, knees and toes all still attached? (Hat tip to Mark and Rahat!) [JapanToday]

The CHP reported that the car was in working order. No mechanical failure seems to have appeared...the impact was estimated at 50 to 60 MPH...Cort Summerfield was 46 years old (02/01/1961)

UPDATE: If you remember, the 242 Turbo was actually the inspiration for the choice of the V8olvo.

UPDATE #2: The V8olvo happened to be right behind the 242 Turbo when it crashed. We're told it went into the wall at speed which made our team think perhaps something happened before the crash to the driver.

UPDATE #3: We have confirmation from a source with close ties to the team that there was indeed a fatality. We are withholding the name and other identifying characteristics until we're given the OK from the family and team.

UPDATE #4: The folks over at Bryan's Message Board have been chronicling the adventures of "Team Porcubimmer" — as such, a few of the forum fan-boys (and girls) were in the stands at Altamont. Here's one of their recaps of what happened:

he shot forward and sped up right before the turn, and went head on into the wall. didn't break, didn't turn...i didn't see anyone bump him. best guess is that he passed out and his foot just acted like a lead weight... but that's just based on the fact that he blasted forward so suddenly and made a beeline for the wall...took them forever to get a fucking tarp up. i was up in the stands with my dad, and he was really upset that it took them so long to do that.

UPDATE #5: We've just received the following e-mail from a team member of the victim of the crash with his name, age and a little bit more detail on what may have happened:

The CHP reported that the car was in working order. No mechanical failure seems to have appeared...the impact was estimated at 50 to 60 MPH...Cort Summerfield was 46 years old (02/01/1961)