IIHS on the Smart ForTwo: Officially Safe?
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash tested the 1,800-pound Smart ForTwo, and it earned the agency’s highest rating, Good, in front and side impacts. Its seats and head restraints earned IIHS' second-highest rating, Acceptable, for protection in rear impacts.
But IIHS president Adrian Lund stopped short of saying the Smart is safe.
"Among the smallest cars, the Smart engineers did their homework and designed a high level of safety into a small package," he said.
Even so, while small cars are safer than ever, Lund said, "the risk of death is higher in crashes of smaller, lighter models. All things being equal, bigger and heavier is better."
In front crash tests, the ForTwo bounced off a barricade like a pinball and could have crossed into another lane of traffic to be struck again. Lund said that because there isn’t a lot of frontal crush space, the Smart is very stiff to prevent intrusion into the passenger compartment. Because of that, it will bounce off what it hits in an impact.
"There's an added risk of bouncing off and striking something else,” he said. “If it runs into a larger and heavier Chevy Tahoe at 40 mph, the Smart is going to bounce off. But while bouncing is a risk, we don't know where it might bounce. We do know the clearer and greater risk is its size and weight -- you can put two Smarts in the space it takes to park one Town Car.”
Where Smart comes up short is in front-end crush space, which gives the driver more time and room to slow down in a frontal impact to prevent injury. Essentially, the safety belts and airbags have to work harder to protect occupants than they would if the car had a few more feet of crumple space in front of the occupants.
While a favorable crash rating was supposed to vindicate Smart for its size, Lund said that if you’re looking for a small, high-mileage car to counter high gas prices, "you don't have to choose the smallest, lightest car.”
“The Toyota Prius gets better mileage (than Smart), earns good front and side crash ratings, and is bigger and weighs more, so we'd expect it would be more protective in serious crashes," Lund said.
IIHS classifies the ForTwo as “micro” because it's smaller than a conventional minicar. It’s 3 feet shorter and 700 pounds lighter than a Mini Cooper.
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While I have not driven a Smart, I did sit in one at the dealer...I don't care what the IIHS ratings are, I did not FEEL safe in it, and cannot imagine going down the road at highway speed. Besides, the one I saw had a sticker north of $15k and was EPA rated in the low to mid 30's on the highway. For that money I would have a VERY hard time passing up a 2-3 year old Civic or Corolla that is bigger, more comfortable, has a proven reliability record, and only gives up a couple miles per gallon.
Surely the fact that it can be rated "Good" but still have the people who test it say they don't actually feel comfortable saying it's safe makes a mockery of the test in the first place?
So many manufacturers advertise their Top Safety Retings as a good thing, yet this proves that it isn't necessarily the case.
Why not just give every vehicle the exact same test? That way, you can make an informed decision between cars of different sizes. Not everyone compares 2 cars of the same class. Someone in the market for a brand new Versa may also be looking at a 2 tear old Altima. Standard tests on vehicles would give you a much easier job telling what is good and what is bad.
I'm not sure how EuroNCAP run their tests but I think they are more uniform in their results.
As an aside, I don't think that the Smart is an unsafe car as such, but certainly you would be at risk of different type of injuries should you be in an accident in one...
Geez, you guys are using a porky "Mini" to compare.
How many pounds does the Elise weigh?
Mart, the test is the same for all cars, but that's the problem: driving a car into a barrier or wall mimics the test vehicle hitting a car of equivalent weight. So even when you test all cars under the same procedure, low weight is a disadvantage.
This applies to frontal crash tests done by the IIHS, NHTSA, and anyone else that I'm aware of.
Yes, IFCAR's right: the tests are all standardized, but it's vehicle weight that makes the difference. Pretty much the only way to test for cross-class crashworthiness is to run a barrier of a standard weight into the vehicle being tested. This is how side-impact tests are conducted and why they are always cross-class comparable.
This test continues to be pointless, very few (usually suicidal) people drive straight into a concrete wall.
This car passes all their requirements, and gets the grade it earned and THEN they feel the need to comment about "secondary impacts"
To pass this test the average sedan has ballooned to over 1 3/4 TONS! A light car comes along and they recomend buying a heavier car? No wonder gas will reach $5 a gallon.
Infosaur,
This particular test is conducted with the vehicle being driven at 40 mph into a 45% driver's-side-frontal, deformable barrier. NHTSA's 35 mph full-frontal test is the one you've described. And while it's less severe and less realistic overall, that test is better for assessing restraint performance, and is therefore not entirely irrelevant.