Antique & Classic Cars Blog

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety decided to test what they learned in science class in high school and discovered–Gasp!–it’s still true. Big objects still win out in collisions with small ones. Yes, when the 300-pound linebacker on the football team hits the 145 pound kicker head on, the little guy still sails farther.

The test the institute made, as you likely already know, was to smash road tots like a Smart Car, Honda Fit, and
Toyota Yaris head-on into a Mercedes C-Class, Accord and Camry with each car doing 40 mph. They align the vehicles so that the drivers’ sides hit (about 40 percent of each front-end makes contact).

There is no basis in logic or denial to assume anything other than what did happen, would, in these collisions. The little cars got damaged much more severely. There was significant intrusion into the little cars’ passenger compartments. Featherweights can’t knock heavyweights out of the ring. A Bobcat can’t push a Caterpillar D10 aside.

“Safe” is a loaded word with no stand-alone meaning. It has meaning only in context. Knives are safe in a drawer and usually in a chef’s hand; less so wielded by a killer.

Tiny cars are not inherently unsafe because you might get hurt if a big car hits you head on. You’ll get hurt more on a motorcycle or scooter, still more on a bicycle, and if you’re walking by the road with only some khakis or a skirt between you and the sedan, we don’t need a study to announce “Skirts Unsafe in Frontal Collision.” Motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, skateboards, Skat-Skootas, and Chuck Taylors are not inherently unsafe. They’re just not well matched against a ton-and-a-half of steel going 40 miles an hour.

It took years and thousands of deaths for people to realize that many SUVs with short wheelbases and high centers of gravity were unsafe when they went off the edge of the road and rolled over, collapsing their roofs with their substantial weight. Were they inherently unsafe? They were unsafe in that circumstance—but did well in collisions in which they remained upright. Big, heavy vehicles can also be a downer if you end up in a lake, whereas a VW Beetle will float a while. Safety is relative.

To borrow from the gun lobby, cars don’t kill people, drivers kill people. Any car of any size, as well as motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, unicycles, roller skates can be operated safely. If we all try our best to do so, we won’t kill ourselves and we won’t kill others, no matter what form of transportation we choose.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 9:03 pm and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.