All this talk about car seats has got me thinking about the cars themselves.

What rating are yours?

We’ve got two 4s. Prior to that we has a 2 which I’m quite glad that I wrote off (at very low speed).

No idea and don’t really care to be honest.

RANT RANT RANT ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

is that the pedestrian safety rating you are quoting?

please please please please tell me it is!

Pedestrian safety is one aspect of the new Euro NCAP classification.

The silliest thing about the testing is they crash small cars into small cars and big cars into big cars, so the rating is not based on your little clio crashing into a transit. Having said that any modern car is really really good at making sure you come out alive.

I’ve just discovered I’ve got a two star and my wife has a not rated. 🙁

I’d like a Subaru Legacy, and that’s a five star – and no good to me as a wish!

I saw the crash test video for my old Fiat Bravo. Sooooo glad that I didn’t have a big shunt in it.

Having said that any modern car is really really good at making sure you come out alive.**

**unless you are a pedestrian – many (very) modern cars have shockingly low performance for pedestrian safety and the motoring press has no interest in reporting that data

You can watch all the crash test vids online at the new site. Some of them are pretty terrifying. E.g. the L200 (IIRC) before it got the firmware upgrade (0 stars, as the drivers head bounces off the steering wheel, then the airbag fires!). Fiat punto (old shape) is “good” too :-S

(4 stars in the biggest MPV class here, 2stars for peds 🙁 )

Tested to 30mph into a stationary item? How many times do you drive into a parked car or object?

How about a offset into a car coming the other way
Or a crash on a NSL
Or a crash on the motorway.

All increments over 30mph will give potentially very dramatic results wont they.

jon1973 – Member
Pedestrian safety is one aspect of the new Euro NCAP classification

a fair point – hadn’t realised that the pedestrian safety rating is now one part of the overall rating

How about a offset into a car coming the other way

One of the tests involves just this. Though the crash is into a static object (it makes no odds). The impact speed is at the statistically most common impact speed (I forget what it is, slower than you expect though).

a fair point – hadn’t realised that the pedestrian safety rating is now one part of the overall rating

Euro NCAP twigged that manufacturers were using occupant ratings to sell cars and that the separation of the two was to the detriment of pedestrian ratings, hence the change.

Five stars (for occupants) for the BM.

About minus five for the Defender.

We’ve just bought my wife a new car this weekend (well, she’ll use it most). I have to say watching it (5*) getting crunched was a very considerably more pleasant experience than watching her current Fiat Siecento (1.5*) meeting it’s maker. 🙁

Clio is still clearly rubbish for the pedestian though – what do I want to be hit by when on foot?

hora – Member
Tested to 30mph into a stationary item? How many times do you drive into a parked car or object?

The way they test them and what they run them into it’s not just like driving into something at 30mph

Full size crash testing is great to watch and for info you are much better off being in a big car than a small car…..it’s all about energy transferance & absorbtion and passenger cell strength to make things survivable for the occupants

what do I want to be hit by when on foot?

as usual the Japanese are good at it

try an Avensis http://www.euroncap.com/results/toyota/avensis/2009/346.aspx

How many times do you drive into a parked car or object?

I imagine this is a very common crash, hitting trees, etc. How about hitting the back of a traffic jam at 80mph, someone did that to my friend just last week.

mythbusters did a programme that included a couple of high speed crashes into ‘walls’, the violance of them has to be seen to be appreciated

On my phone, but no doubt they are on t’net

5* for the Mondeo and the Focus we have.

only 2* on them for pedestrians though…

only 2* on them for pedestrians though

actually that is relatively good!

interestly on the new system cars score 5 stars overall but can still have a relatively poor pedestrian safety so that’s good for carmakers

for example the new A4 is not very good compared to its peers and the Volvo C30 is great for occupants but lowest test score to date on the new system for peds

I seem to remember 5th Gear doing a head on test between an old (10-15 years or so) Volvo estate and a modern Nissan Note (or somthing similar) and the small modern car was although rather shorter than at the start had retained integrity of the passenger cell whereas the Volvo was a total mess and would have caused significant injury to occupants.

Is it fair to say that, as newer cars get safer, older cars become more risky ?
I’m thinking in terms of an older 2* car gets hit by a new 5* car, (of same size), surely more of the impact would be deflected onto the less robust vehicle…? I guess that a collision has a certain amount of energy to be absorbed, & if one deflects that energy surely it will go to the one less able to deflect?
We run a 54′ Galaxy & a 52′ Mondeo incedently, how can I find out what * rating they are ?

I recall reading somewhere that cars are judged relative to their size, eg. a 5 star small car may not be a as safe as 4 star big car, it should only be used as a comparison bewteen similar cars, eg 5 star small car and 4 star small car. I’m quite happy with my 3 star big car.

Also, what about likelyhood of an acccident? Obviously driver/idiot-coming-the-way are the biggest causes, but do things such as stability when swerving violently or stopping distance get accounted for?

Anyone got a VW camper? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpU5azjCB8

4 and 2, nissan X-Trail

The tests are pretty hard. Frontal impact into a concrete block at 64kmh

Side impact at 50 kmh

Pushed sideways into a pole at 29kmh

Plus several others

Is it fair to say that, as newer cars get safer, older cars become more risky ?
I’m thinking in terms of an older 2* car gets hit by a new 5* car, (of same size), surely more of the impact would be deflected onto the less robust vehicle…?

Not exactly, no. Newer cars are generally better because they absorb the impact over a larger period of time during the impact while maintainin a strong shell around the occupants. This doesn’t mean the other half of the impact is likely to come off worse, possibly the opposite in some cases. What does mean the other car will come off worse is that more modern cars are getting heavier and heavier and heavier. Double the weight = double the momentum = double the impact energy. But newer cars have better brakes, meaning they’re likely to have slowed proportionately more, and impact energy is proportional to speed squared.

All the impacts are at <40mph or less, so not really indicative of motorway impacts or even head on impacts at 60mph closing speeds.

I used to lie on the parcel shelf of my dad’s Cortina.

Nowadays it’s NCAP this…Isofix that…

3’15”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-JGIYLZZUg

I’ve forgotten what they were called now but there is/was a second agency that was compiling information about car safety other than NCAP, but their records were based on reports of actual user accidents rather than NCAPs laboratory tests.

NCAP tests reveal how safe a car might be in a crash, but not how likely it is to be crashed, perhaps because of the nature of the car itself (modern safety shells create a lot of blind spots for instance), and 4x4s are quite crashy. I remember it revealing that Volvo drivers crash alot with the suggestion that feeling safer caused people to drive with less care.

It also revealed how cars fair over time – a bit of fatigue and corrosion making a big difference to crash safety for instance

I remember being in a nasty crash in a mates old Mini – hit a wall at 40ish, bounced off it, hit it again and totalled the car (I was a passenger).

The crash revealed that one brake drum was binding and the chassis was mostly made of rust! We were pretty lucky to be almost unscathed TBH.

Talking about this at work today, we were saying how the NCAP seems to test each car in isolation and not take other road users into account. (Could be wrong though, never really looked past the headline figures)

Say it’s a side on collision at a junction and a 2* Navara ploughs into a 5* Corsa (grades made up), there’s only ever likely to be one winner there. You may be more likely to crash in said Navara but that probably wouldn’t console the Corsa driver. Presumably it’s this kind of logic which leads to the school run arms race.

If the NCAP ratings were equal would it be safer to try and avoid accidents with a safer driving small supermini, get a much more survivable but harder to drive large 4×4 or split the difference and get a family saloon? Perhaps more importantly, which would feel safer?

Average speed of motorway crashes is about 15mph….

Single lane national speed limit roads are the most dangerous.