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]

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

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.

Now it's here — on the not-so-wilds. When NHTSA tested the ForTwo in a frontal crash test, it received four stars on the driver side and only three on the passenger side and from what our uninformed eyes can tell — the A-pillar looks to be in pretty good shape with no evidence of deformity. So is the Smart Fortwo for you? Well, we're thinking it'll depend on what those crash tests tell us and only time will tell what the IIHS thinks. [via YouTube]

CRASH-TESTED FORD TAURUS SHOWS SAFETY LEADERSHIP

NEW YORK, March 18, 2008 - Most cars at auto shows are highly polished and gleaming, except one - a Ford Taurus that crashed into a 1 million pound wall at 35 mph en route to the Jacob Javits Convention Center. Deliberately.

Ford wants New York International Auto Show visitors to see how the Taurus - rated 'Top Safety Pick' by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) - fared in a 35 mph crash test. Positioned in the same place occupied by the seated crash-test dummy, showgoers view video of the actual crash test.

"We want people to see what happens in the blink of an eye," said Stephen Kozak, North American safety chief engineer for Ford Motor Company. "We want to open people's eyes that not all cars are created equal when it comes to safety. There is a difference and we want to show why Taurus is the safest rated large sedan sold in America."

A car crash can literally happen in the blink of an eye - 100 milliseconds, or about a tenth of a second, from start to finish. In that brief span of time, safety belt pretensioners tighten the belt, frontal air bags are inflated to the appropriate level, and the forces of the crash are being deflected by the structure of the vehicle designed specifically to help protect occupants inside.

The crashed Taurus test car is expected to be a popular display at the show - and not just because it looks so different from all the other vehicles. More than 50 percent of car buyers call safety a major purchase consideration.

The crash test was conducted at Ford's testing facilities in Dearborn, Mich., prior to the show. The company conducts hundreds of crash tests and thousands more simulated computer tests on a yearly basis for its vehicles.

"A crash can happen to the best of us, and it may happen before you have time to react," Kozak said. "So we believe the best way to react is to buy the car equipped to help protect you when the unexpected happens."

Taurus models equipped with optional AdvanceTrac® electronic stability control have earned the highest available rating of five-stars for rollover resistance from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Taurus earned five-star ratings from NHTSA for both driver and front passenger in a frontal crash test and five stars for both the driver and rear-seat passenger in a side impact crash test.

The IIHS also gives Taurus top marks - "Good" ratings - for frontal, side and rear impacts.

Key features of the Ford Taurus safety story include:

* Safety CanopyTM, Ford's exclusive side impact protection system, featuring side curtain airbags that helps protect front and rear outboard passengers in both rollovers and side impact crashes. The curtains are designed to slip between the occupant and the side window. The Safety Canopy is designed to stay inflated for several seconds, as rollover crashes often last much longer than side impact crashes.
* SPACE, Ford's Side Protection And Cabin Enhancement architecture. SPACE is designed to help protect occupants using a complex configuration of strategically placed long steel rails and square tubes under the car body, along the vertical door posts (or "B pillars"), in between the front and rear seats, and along the roof lines (or "A pillars"). The rails are designed to bend and the tubes compress in a severe crash; this creates 10 different "crush zones" all over the car to help channel crash forces away from the occupants inside.
* AdvanceTrac® electronic stability control system can predict the vehicle's intentions using a sensor to detect and measure oversteer and yaw by monitoring the vehicle's speed, throttle position and steering wheel angle. When the system senses wheel slip, engine torque is reduced and braking is applied where needed to help keep the car tracking safely on its intended path.
* Ford's Belt-Minder®, a safety belt reminder technology for the driver and front passenger that takes over after the initial safety belt reminder stops chiming. If the driver or front passenger remains unbuckled, the system chimes and flashes a warning lamp for six seconds every 30 seconds for five minutes or until the driver buckles up, whichever comes first.
* Personal Safety SystemTM, a suite of seven protection technologies working together as a system to help protect occupants, including dual-stage front air bags and occupant classification.

# # #

About Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company, a global automotive industry leader based in Dearborn, Mich., manufactures or distributes automobiles in 200 markets across six continents. With about 245,000 employees and about 100 plants worldwide, the company's core and affiliated automotive brands include Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Mercury, Volvo and Mazda. The company provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company. For more information regarding Ford's products, please visit www.ford.com.

# # #

2008 winners of Top Safety Pick award — number of winners increases; pickups eligible for first time

ARLINGTON, VA —Thirty-four vehicles earn the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Top Safety Pick award for 2008. The award recognizes vehicles that do the best job of protecting people in front, side, and rear crashes based on ratings in the Institute's tests. Winners also have to be equipped with electronic stability control (ESC), which research shows can significantly reduce the risk of crashing.

Compared with last year, automakers have more than doubled the number of vehicles that meet criteria for Top Safety Pick. At the beginning of the 2007 model year, 13 models qualified, but as manufacturers have made changes and introduced new and safer vehicle designs, 10 additional vehicles qualified during the year. Now another 11 vehicles are being added to the list for 2008. Designating winners based on the tests makes it easier for consumers to identify vehicles that afford the best overall protection without sifting through multiple sets of comparative crash test results.

"For 2008, consumers have the widest selection of vehicles they've ever had that afford the best protection in the most common kinds of crashes," says Institute president Adrian Lund. Front and side impacts are the most common kinds of fatal crashes, killing nearly 25,000 of the 31,000 vehicle occupants who died in 2005. Rear-end crashes usually aren't fatal, but they result in a large proportion of the injuries that occur in crashes. About 60 percent of insurance injury claims in 2002 reported minor neck sprains and strains.

All current car and minivan models, small and midsize SUVs, and small and large pickup trucks are eligible to win Top Safety Pick. Eight vehicles from Ford and its subsidiary, Volvo, make the list of winners for 2008. Seven winners are from Honda and its subsidiary, Acura.

Winners have features that help avoid crashes: The Institute added a crash prevention criterion last year to earn Top Safety Pick. Winning vehicles have to be equipped with ESC, which can help drivers avoid crashes altogether. ESC is a control system comprised of sensors and a microcomputer that continuously monitors how well a vehicle responds to a driver's steering input and selectively applies the vehicle brakes and modulates engine power to keep the vehicle traveling along the path indicated by the steering wheel position. This technology helps prevent sideways skidding and loss of control that can lead to rollovers. ESC can help drivers maintain control during emergency maneuvers when their vehicles otherwise might spin out.

"Vehicles should be designed to provide good occupant protection when crashes occur, but now with ESC we have the possibility of preventing many crashes altogether," Lund says. "If all vehicles were equipped with ESC, as many as 10,000 fatal crashes could be avoided each year." Institute research indicates that ESC reduces the risk of fatal single-vehicle crashes by 56 percent and fatal multiple-vehicle crashes by 32 percent. Many single-vehicle crashes involve rolling over, and ESC reduces the risk of fatal single-vehicle rollovers by 80 percent (SUVs) and 77 percent (cars).

For first time pickups are eligible: Pickup trucks haven't been eligible to win Top Safety Pick until now because the Institute hadn't begun side testing them. The Toyota Tundra is first to qualify. Pickups aren't as likely as cars or SUVs to have side airbags or ESC, and Toyota has made these features standard in the Tundra.

"Pickups are among the top selling vehicles in the United States," Lund points out. "They're also more likely than in the past to be used as family vehicles, so equipping them with the latest safety features is important."

Protection in rear impacts improves: Crash tests have driven major improvements in the designs of all kinds and sizes of passenger vehicles. The Institute began frontal crash tests for consumer information in 1995. Side tests were added in 2003 and rear tests in 2004. Most vehicles now earn good ratings in the frontal test, but significant differences still are apparent in vehicle performance in side and rear tests.

Some manufacturers have been working to improve the ratings of their vehicles in the rear test. For example, the seat/head restraints in the Honda Accord, Element, and Odyssey as well as the BMW X3 and X5 are rated good compared with previous designs that were rated marginal or poor. Audi improved the design of seat/head restraints in the A3 from acceptable to good. Another 23 vehicles would have won 2008 awards if they had good seat/head restraint designs. Toyota could have claimed 10 more awards, including 3 for Lexus models. Nissan and Volkswagen could have picked up 4 awards apiece.

Another area where safety is improving is occupant protection in side impacts. More 2008 model vehicles include as standard equipment side airbags designed to protect people's heads. The Saturn was side tested twice. In the first test, the side curtain airbag didn't deploy properly, and the head of the dummy positioned in the back seat was struck by the sill of the window in the door. This impact didn't produce high head injury measures, but head protection was inadequate. In response, General Motors redesigned the side curtain airbag to ensure more rapid inflation and better coverage of the airbag next to the dummy's head. In the second test, the fix was successful, and the VUE's side rating improved from acceptable to good. Top Safety Pick applies to VUEs built after December 2007.

Each year, the Institute offers to test Top Safety Pick candidates early in the model year. The policy is for manufacturers to reimburse the Institute for the cost of vehicles if the tests aren't part of the group's regular schedule. Top Safety Pick is presented by vehicle size because size and weight are closely related, and both influence how well occupants will be protected in serious crashes. Larger, heavier vehicles generally afford better protection in crashes than smaller, lighter ones.

How the vehicles are evaluated: The Institute's frontal crashworthiness evaluations are based on results of frontal offset crash tests at 40 mph. Each vehicle's overall evaluation is based on measurements of intrusion into the occupant compartment, injury measures from 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.

Each vehicle's overall side evaluation is based on performance in a crash test in which the side of the vehicle is struck by a barrier moving at 31 mph that represents the front end of a pickup or SUV. Ratings reflect injury measures recorded on two instrumented SID-IIs dummies, assessment of head protection countermeasures, and the vehicle's structural performance during the impact. Injury measures obtained from the two dummies, one in the driver seat and the other in the back seat behind the driver, are used to determine the likelihood that a driver and/or passenger in a real-world crash would have sustained serious injury. The movements and contacts of the dummies' heads during the crash also are evaluated. Structural performance is based on measurements indicating the amount of B-pillar intrusion into the occupant compartment.

Rear crash protection is rated according to a two-step procedure. Starting points for the ratings 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

11 NEW WINNERS FOR 2008

Midsize cars
Audi A3
Honda Accord

Small car
Subaru Impreza equipped with optional electronic stability control

Minivan
Honda Odyssey

Midsize SUVs
BMW X3
BMW X5
Hyundai Veracruz built after August 2007
Saturn VUE built after December 2007
Toyota Highlander

Small SUV
Honda Element

Large pickup
Toyota Tundra

ALL 34 WINNERS

Large cars
Audi A6
Ford Taurus with optional electronic stability control
Mercury Sable with optional electronic stability control
Volvo S80

Midsize cars
Audi A3, A4
Honda Accord
Saab 9-3
Subaru Legacy with optional electronic stability control

Midsize convertibles
Saab 9-3
Volvo C70

Small car
Subaru Impreza with optional electronic stability control

Minivans
Honda Odyssey
Hyundai Entourage
Kia Sedona

Midsize SUVs
Acura MDX, RDX
BMW X3, X5
Ford Edge, Taurus X
Honda Pilot
Hyundai Santa Fe
Hyundai Veracruz built after August 2007
Lincoln MKX
Mercedes M class
Saturn VUE built after December 2007
Subaru Tribeca
Toyota Highlander
Volvo XC90

Small SUVs
Honda CR-V, Element
Subaru Forester with optional electronic stability control

Large pickup
Toyota Tundra

ALSO RANS
Twenty-three vehicles earn good ratings in front and side crash tests. They have ESC, standard or optional. They would be 2008 Top Safety Pick winners if their seat/head restraints also earned good ratings:

* Acura RL, TL
* BMW 3 series
* Chrysler Sebring convertible
* Infiniti M35/M45
* Kia Amanti
* Lexus IS 250/350, ES 350, GS 350/460
* Nissan Pathfinder, Xterra both with optional side airbags
* Nissan Quest
* Toyota Avalon, Camry, FJ Cruiser, 4Runner, Prius, RAV4, and Sienna
* Volkswagen Eos, Jetta, Passat, Rabbit
[IIHS]

Winners for the 2007 model year:
Large Car: Audi A6
Midsized Car: Audi A4, Saab 9-3, Subaru Legacy (with optional stability control)
Minivan: Hyundai Entourage, Kia Sedona
Luxury SUV: Mercedes M-class, Volvo XC90
Midsize SUV: Acura RDX, Honda Pilot, Subaru B9 Tribeca
Small SUV: Honda CR-V, Subaru Forester

Related:
More on IIHS [internal]

Oh, the results? Is that what you're asking for? Well...

...the Chevy Impala and Toyota Avalon both received "good" ratings, the Buick Lucerne and Hyundai Azera received "acceptable" ratings and the Buick LaCrosse and Chrysler 300 received "marginal" ratings — all when tested with side airbags. Of the large cars tested without side airbags, the Chrysler 300, Ford Five Hundred and Ford Crown Victoria — all received ratings of "Poor." It should be noted that when the Ford Five Hundred was tested last year with side airbags, it received a Gold Medal — so it's got that going for it.

So remember kids, side airbags save lives.

Study: Side Air Bags Improve Safety [CBS/AP]
New side impact crash test results: Impala, Avalon are top large car performers [IIHS]

Related:
$40,000 in Protection: Audi A6, Infiniti M35 Top Frontal Crash-Test Ratings [internal]

NBC's Dateline again had the exclusive story on the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety's top safety picks for 2006 last night, with reporter Lea Thompson again cast in the role of safetymarm. The determining factor in both Silver and Gold categories was the inclusion of side curtain air bags, which help prevent noggin smackdowns during both frontal-offset and side-impact crashes. Separating Silver and Gold winners, however, were headrests sufficient to provide whiplash. Click through for results.

Silver
VW Jetta
VW Passat
Audi A3
Audi A4
Audi A6
Chevrolet Malibu (with opt. side airbags)

Gold
Ford 500 or Mercury Montego (only with optional side airbags)
Subaru Legacy
Saab 1994
Honda Civic

Safe cars: Gold and silver awards [MSNBC]

Related:
Safety, Schmafety: The Least-Safe Cars of '06 [internal]

Note to mom: Don't be a cheapskate, spring for the side curtain air bags. Side-impact tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found 2006 Ford Freestar and Mazda MPV minivans without side air bags pretty much blow, as far as safety goes. Both vehicles received "poor" ratings on the test, which indicates the level of damage injuries that could be sustained during crashes at intersections. When equipped with side air bags, a $695 option on the Freestar and $400 on the MPV XL, both minivans received "acceptable," the second highest rating. Side air bags are standard on the Freestar's FoMoCo sibling, the Mercury Monterey, as well as the Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna.

Related:
Minivans Receive Poor Crash-Test Ratings for Neck Injury [internal]

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety gave Audi's 2005 A6 and Infiniti's 2006 M35 sedans its highest ratings in frontal impact crash tests, while the Audi also nabbed the "good" rating for side impact protection. Audi's results are an improvement over the "acceptable" score it recieved for the last-generation A6 — the car had been demoted by the potential for leg injuries. The Infiniti performed well in the frontal test, but recieved a lower side-impact score, which the Instutute indicated was due to a potential for "torso injuries." (The 31mph battering ram was not injured during crash tests.) The Institute will test other sedans in the same class as the A6 and M35 in the coming months.

Related:
Software Simulates Crash Tests; Swank Cars Have the Lowest Fatality Rate, Study Finds [internal]