Are bigger cars safer than smaller cars?

[Horsepower]

Automatically, most would say yes..

but, think again.

[CVT]

Thanks for sharing bro.

The magic of the crumple zone!

5505:home:

[Bogeyman]

Anyone who thinks it's all about size should try pitting a Chery V5 against a Mercedes B-Class.

[deedee]

the test is bias.if you cant compare an "old" big car to a "new" small car cause the safety features and parts used arent as advance as the new cars.
try pitting a dodge charger for a big car to a honda civic.both 06 model so atleast the parts and safety features and engineering is onpar to each other.

heres a good example..i drive an 00 expedition and it was last winter,i rearended a honda accord(maybe 30 model) i was going maybe 20MPH on an icy road and my truck just slid as i applied my brakes so itried to swerved to my left to avoid the car but still ended up clipping the left corner bumper of the car.
result......the corner bumper of the accord had a fistfull size indententation while my front right bumper had 2 X 5-6 inch scrathes.(pencil size scratches tha was easily buffed out)
while my insurance had to pay the repair for the accord that cost roughly 1200 dollars.

[mbeige]

This has been discussed before.

Stiffer but lighter materials used and better engineering of crumple zones and junction points in the vehicle structure all add up to its overall safety level as well as to its crashworthiness. This allows manufacturers to create smaller, but safer, vehicles that are not only city-friendly on tight parking spaces but also more efficient than their predecessors.

[Memphis Raines]

This has been a long standing debate as far as I can remember.

The conclusion has always been linked to a vehicle's structural integrity with the appropriate passenger restraint systems. In the video feature above, we saw no less than a Volvo, supposedly one of the safest vehicles in the world, figure in this disturbing outcome.

So it is easy to see that build quality and proper design is always the bottomline to vehicle's crashworthiness, not the eminent heft.

[niky]

It's an old Volvo, note.

The conclusion, though, is valid. Many people think that a 5-star small car is still unsafe compared to a three or four star large car (or even one with no crash data, like some bigger trucks here), simply because there is more metal to absorb the crash force. Which is largely bullsh*t. As we can see here, it's where the car shunts the crash force that's important. If the crash force goes in one end and goes out the other, all good. If it overloads any of the safety-cell structure and transfers that force to occupants... R.I.P.

What EuroNCAP measures is not just airbag use, but deformation of the crash structure... the details of which are listed on their site. The Renault shown above suffers no footwell deformation, while some late-model Ford trucks (not current... crash tests for new US trucks are pretty good), as well as the new Nissan Navarra, have suffered safety-cell deformations in crash tests, which can injure occupants.

[Dr.Kamiya]

The problem is that crash tests are often done against an non-deformable, immovable barrier. In the real world, people will be crashing against other cars. I would also say that the Fifth Gear comparison is a bit extreme. There is at least 10 years between the two cars they crashed. In fact the volvo was so old, it was sold at a time before crash safety ratings were even invented.

It has been acknowledged that survivability in big cars is often higher than their crash ratings would suggest. Let's say in a traffic accident, I would still much rather be in a 3-star SUV than a 5-star subcompact.

IIHS study on vehicle size vs survivability
http://www.iihs.org/sr/pdfs/sr3903.pdf

More on vehicle size vs survivability. Here you see that in a single vehicle crash, large vehicles fare worse than cars, but in a crash involving 2 vehicles or more the situation is reversed.
http://www.iihs.org/sr/pdfs/sr3301.pdf

[mbeige]

It's not that the Volvo was so old, actually, but moreso that the car probably was not designed for an offset crash that will concentrate all of the kinetic energy into just one of the two forks that hold the front crumple zone. A head on collision may have given it a better chance but considering it's an offset crash, the single crumple zone fork absorbed all the energy, so if it was not built to withstand such an impact that's what you'll see.

I think that's around an early 1990's to late 1990's Volvo, something which is still pretty safe...for its time. I don't know much about Volvo safety tests and their research progress but for Mercedes-Benz, I know the offset crash tests were done in the 1970's and were adapted to the W126, released in 1981. That made their E-class W124 (similar to the Volvo above) better suited for the offset crashes that are most likely to occur than head on collisions. The W124's were released in 1985, so I think considering the time it takes to design and engineer a car, that's probably not just a 10-year gap but more like a 15-year gap, if you would consider the two as at par with each other in terms of occupant safety. The Renault, on the other hand, was pretty new and for sure had much more advanced engineering than the Volvo (after all, it's a brick...). Kidding aside, there's still a huge difference in technology and engineering to boot, but this is a realistic scenario you can imagine can happen any time with the various cars roaming the streets.

The only thing I'm going to be concerned about is the deceleration forces acting on your body upon impact, even if it has airbags. Considering that the crumple zones are really small on compact cars, and even if the material used to build the crumple zones are stiffer and can absorb energy in a progressive manner, it's still a pretty short crumple zone to work with. One of the reasons of death in a crash, even if the cars fared well and the occupants were belted properly, is the massive deceleration forces, more so at high speed, should that gruesome thought ever occur. I've heard of stories where the aorta was ripped right at the moment of impact and that caused instant death to the driver. On another instance the organs sheared off from their original locations and caused massive internal bleeding resulting in death.

[Jun aka Pekto]

Makes me glad our cars have airbags. 2 frontal in the Contour and 6 in the Sonata, plus good crumple zones. They may come in handy in case my brain goes blank or a drunk swerves head-on in front of me.