The Good the Bad and the Ugly.

[crockers]

Getting back onto topic...

Size doesn't really matter as proven on (I think) 5th Gear - where they crashed a Renault Modus into a Volvo 740. I thought the Renault wouldn't stand a chance against the massive old heavy Volvo - deemed to be one of the safest cars of its time.

I was shocked at the result..the renault - all doors opened no intrusion into passenger shell ...Volvo....call the firebrigade to cut it open etc etc..

Just goes to prove the importance of design and absorption and distribution of impact forces.

Also I think the Q7 is UGLY....

 

[st4]

Getting back onto topic...

Size doesn't really matter as proven on (I think) 5th Gear - where they crashed a Renault Modus into a Volvo 740. I thought the Renault wouldn't stand a chance against the massive old heavy Volvo - deemed to be one of the safest cars of its time.

I was shocked at the result..the renault - all doors opened no intrusion into passenger shell ...Volvo....call the firebrigade to cut it open etc etc..

Just goes to prove the importance of design and absorption and distribution of impact forces.

Also I think the Q7 is UGLY....

Wasn't the old heavy volvo only 1.5tons. I assume the weight differential to be c. 400kg. An equivalent estate today is nearer 1.8tons.

Car safety has improved dramatically, and its done this through crumple zones, higher strength steels and increased mass.

I would have expected the modus to be safer, its a much more modern design and that test was really apples and pears albiet an interesting test. The modus was worth a lot more than the old Volvo and is from a different era.

Try crashing the modus into a W211 and see what happens...

 

[S60_alex]

The comment on the future safety testing focussing more on the impact to other cars got me thinking.

Here is a video from the same people as the OP quoted, except this time it compares the damage caused by a Volvo XC90 vs a Kia Sorento against a VW Golf.

It's very interesting to see how the Volvo activates the Golf's crumple zones, whereas the Kia bounces up over them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9rENn6lI3c&feature=related

Although to be honest, watching the video at 1:12 - 1:15, I'm not so sure it'd matter either way!!

 

[Dryce]

SUV=mankinds primary instinct, a sense of self preservation.

I doubt that most of the owners are that analytical.

One way to prove your assertion would be to make seat belts and air bags illegal in a SUV and see if that affected sales.

 

[st4]

I doubt that most of the owners are that analytical.

One way to prove your assertion would be to make seat belts and air bags illegal in a SUV and see if that affected sales.

I am going to put another assertion forward.

People make big assumptions and I will apply some of them here.

How many people will see an SUV parked up and think its safe. An example is my mother, who wanted me to buy a Land Rover defender as she thought it was safe and not a "low" car as it is less safe. It has no crumble zones, few if any airbags and in a crash is probably not a safe bet.

People just see a big lump of metal and the taller and heavier it is the bigger the safety they think it will offer. They place little value in airbags "described by my old man as unnecessary and the invention of a jobsworth" ans seatbelts "only of some intrinsic value" and really are just there "so a copper can nab you if you haven't got it on". This was a discussion we had after I asked him why he never wears it.

The perceived level of safety comes from the size and mass of the car and its height. Not what lies within. The option of no seatbelts or airbags wouldn't sway it that much...

They aren't bought for their driving dynamics, fuel consumption, but for levels of perceived safety, practicality (they do score heavily on this front) and image/status.

 

[Dragon]

What on Earth has the Government got to do with crashing a Q7 into a 500..??

Please stop your anti establishment, political posts polluting all the threads on this forum. Not only is it against the rules, it's really....AND I MEAN REALLY...tedious.

And I've deleted your Nana as it certainly isn't a post to be jubilant about.

"Nana" you must be an Indian
"deleted" you carry a knife

ABSO

 

[st4]

Eh?

 

[Satch]

Eh?

Quite.

However, the relative crash behaviour of cars has so many variables you cannot directly compare between rating classes and car size. So best to view these as indicative, not absolute.

Occupants of smaller car will always tend come off worse in a head on or offset collision with larger vehicle even if cabin space of both remains intact, although having better airbags and restraint systems will help.

Heavier vehicle will tend to maintain forwards momentum for the longer period of time, at expense of smaller vehicle which in some cases will simply stop going forwards and be pushed backwards over a very short period of time, thus generating very high G loadings on occupants.

Still depresses me to think that one of the all time losers to date was the Rover 100

http://www.euroncap.com/tests/rover_100_1997/11.aspx

 

[Dryce]

Still depresses me to think that one of the all time losers to date was the Rover 100

Well it was a late seventies design launched in 1980.

A fair comparison would have been with its contemporaries.

The really depressing aspect is that Rover didn't manage to replace it sensibly in the late eighties.

 

[marcos]

"Nana" you must be an Indian
"deleted" you carry a knife

ABSO

What are you on about now my fire breathing friend

 

[RedDog]

4x4 are meant to survive hitting a bull or a kangaroo.

No........'Roo bars are meant to help a 4x4 survive hitting a bull or a kangaroo

 

[Londonscottish]

I personally don't get the huge 4x4 thing at all.. oversize cars for 'large' people.


Ade

I just look at 4X4's and think; the front bumper height is perfectly aligned with my 4 yr old boy's head. Nice. What a considerate vehicle to drive round London.

 

[Dieselman]

I just look at 4X4's and think; the front bumper height is perfectly aligned with my 4 yr old boy's head. Nice. What a considerate vehicle to drive round London.

Get him to sleep with his feet in a growbag..

 

[RedDog]

I just look at 4X4's and think; the front bumper height is perfectly aligned with my 4 yr old boy's head. Nice. What a considerate vehicle to drive round London.

Perhaps he should walk on the pavement

 

[st4]

I just look at 4X4's and think; the front bumper height is perfectly aligned with my 4 yr old boy's head. Nice. What a considerate vehicle to drive round London.

But you could buy a 4x4 and then someone could a) say that about you b) your 4 year old would not longer be subject to that scenario.

An eco freak would say driving a 4 litre + engined car is unnecessary too, but your allowed that pleasure so why not levy the same level of consideration to someone with a taller car.

If they banned 4x4's, the next thing would be the banning of high powered cars.

 

[Defiant]

And crashes between vehicles of different sizes/weights don't occur in your world ?

Probably a bit more in mine than in yours, as I answer 911 here, and dispatch the CHP.

Or perhaps you think that the excruciating pain, lifelong disability and death in motor vehicle collisions is something that can't be effectively addressed by imaginative engineering?

I know that the folly of airbags generates a goodly deal of your hyperbolically-elucidated injuries. Meanwhile, passenger cars are left with Volvo's joke of a lazy man's harness, trusting those hideous face bombs to hold you from the wheel or dash -neither of which you'd ever touch from inside a decent harness- while deafening and blinding you for the second and third impacts.

Lets forget about safety developments we all take for granted that came from crash testing like vehicle crumple zones, safety cells, seat belts, airbags, belt tensioners, anti-whiplash head restraints, curtain airbags, child safety seats, because,---- to quote a well known phrase ------
SH** HAPPENS.

Odd that most of those things are missing from vehicles built to withstand inevitable crashes, isn't it?

Sorry got to disagree. I'm not in favour of staging crashes simply for spectacle which is maybe what your talking about?? but the test collision on the video was obviously a careful experiment from which some valuable and perhaps some "uncomfortable " data emerged.

At this point in the development of the motorcar, there is no mystery about how to construct a cabin that will be reasonably safe for its occupants. Yes, pooh occurs, and that's why the Mercedes shift knob assumed the shape it had- there were three incidents that Mercedes knew of in the year previous its introduction (1970?) in which occupants had been killed by the shifter penetrating the occupant's eye socket and continuing into their brain. The revised Mercedes shift knob wouldn't pass through a human orbit.
Crash testing -and particularly that showing a Smart walloping a barrier at eighty, or an SUV plowing through a compact, or the Queen Mary running up the docks and over a freight train- is merely little boys playing with noisy toys. It has no purpose, other than to point out that physics can't be designed into change. Big will almost always win. Of course, if that compact has a roof rack, and it conspires to arrange one of its rails through the windshield of the SUV and through the driver's head, I suppose the SUV was the more "dangerous" of those two in that collision.
Crash testing is something for insurance companies to rationalize their fee schedules, and to produce scary footage to persuade mothers to buy cars shaped like refrigerator cartons.

But our disagreeing is not a bad thing for anyone.

 

[grober]

cross talk?

I think we might be talking at cross purposes here. In most European countries wearing seat belts or harnesses if you prefer is compulsory and most modern european cars have a specification that includes most if not all of the safety features I mentioned. We have even developed a 2nd/3rd generation of airbags whose degree/rate of inflation is governed by the severity of impact. I agree that initially many safety devices were crude -laptop only belts are a good example but gradually things get refined and improve in efficiency and lives are saved.

 

[Ade B]

I just look at 4X4's and think; the front bumper height is perfectly aligned with my 4 yr old boy's head. Nice. What a considerate vehicle to drive round London.

Especially when the large ground clearance and long travel suspension effectively allows SUV drivers to ignore speed bumps around the city.

Don't think they should be banned, just fail to see the attraction (if you don't live in the sticks).

Or on a farm


Ade

 

[Adam230K]

4x4's.... annoy me.... alot.... drink alot of gas, take up alot of road space, danger to others on the road.... probably more things that i haven't mentioned.

they belong in the desert and mountainous areas... otherwise... just... NO

 

[Alfie]

I just look at 4X4's and think; the front bumper height is perfectly aligned with my 4 yr old boy's head. Nice. What a considerate vehicle to drive round London.

By that token, then so is every bus, van, coach, lorry etc.

4x4's have become an easy target group of motorists on the back of a load of hype and claptrap from the greens.

This debate has gone on and on for years and will probably go on and on until the green brigade move onto their next fad. They will probably start complaining that tree huggers are squeezing the trees too hard and its hurting them