11 ms·

Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

174 points by the-dude 11y ago

nomercy400 11y ago
The worrying part here isn't that the cars are not safe, or that TTIP will allow certified cars from the US be sold in EU, but that the industry tries to hide it. And that there is apparently a gap between certification in the US and certification in the EU.
- the-dude 11y ago
  I think the timing is very interesting with regard to dieselgate.
  - masklinn 11y ago
    Yes it's really fun all around, with EU manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent US emission regulations and US manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent EU safety regulations.
    - rplst8 11y ago
      I'd take more stringent safety standards over ridiculous emissions standards any day. Though, you could argue stricter safety standards fly in the face of emissions standards. More weight in the car, plus if the occupant survives, their carbon footprint is still there.
      - happyscrappy 11y ago
        The cheating EU cars are emitting 40x the pollution which is why air quality in Europe sucks.
        adventured 11y ago
        At least in some places it certainly does: http://www.france24.com/en/20150320-paris-city-smog-pollution-plume-labs-hidalgo-public-transport-diesel http://www.france24.com/en/20150320-paris-city-smog-pollutio...
      - msabalau 11y ago
        People can decide to drive or not drive. Or at least decide to drive less. Kids with asthma and elderly can't decide not to breathe. Although evidently VW was content to effectively encourage them in the direction of not breathing.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      EU cars will be recalled all over the globe for cheating, there are no US recalls because they did not cheat. The EU cars violate EU regulations by cheating. It should be fun for them as it appears to be industry wide and state sanctioned. Maybe they can raise their pollution limits enough that they are not recalled in the EU.
- gph 11y ago
  Did they really try to hide it though? They didn't attempt to stop the report from being published. All they did was not promote it themselves. Is that a bit unethical? Perhaps, but saying they actively tried to hide or bury it makes it seem like they tried to stop the researchers from publishing their results or otherwise put pressure on them to fudge their results. Neither of those things happened. Honestly, I think the Independent is making a big deal out of it because of the current perception around the VW scandal. And everyone in this thread is eating it up. If this same thing happened without the VW scandal, I doubt anyone cares half as much.
Maarten88 11y ago
So the report was published normally, and this "burying" consists of lobyists not talking about it much? And therefore the press not writing about it much? Press and politics seem to be depending on lobyists to determine the agenda, and even do their work sometimes, which I think is a problem that has gotten out of hand, and not only in the car industry.
- 7952 11y ago
  It is also a lack of civic society. There are not enough mainstream organisations fighting these issues.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    At this address you will find six pages of links to such organizations: https://www.aaafoundation.org/useful-links https://www.aaafoundation.org/useful-links
bencoder 11y ago
The most interesting part of this for me is that there is a difference at all. The difference is not explained in the article. I've never lived in the US; what is the difference between EU and US cars in this respect? Edit for clarity: What I meant, is /why/ is there such a difference in safety? What physical differences between the cars cause that?
- adaml_623 11y ago
  Please read the article again: "passengers in a typical EU model are 33 per cent safer in front-side collisions, an accident that often results in serious injury, than those in a typical US model." Less deaths and injuries if cars meet EU standards
  - bencoder 11y ago
    I read that, I saw the difference. Sorry I wasn't clear in my original post. I meant: what causes the difference? Why is there such a big difference?
    - celticninja 11y ago
      Quite simply US car manufacturers don't have to make their cars as safe, as a result they include bare minimum safety requirements to pass regulation and save on costs. As another poster says it also seems that they do little R&D in this area either, again probably to save costs and to be able spend money designing more inefficient trucks for single occupants.
      - Retric 11y ago
        That's only part of it, US law requires safty systems to designed around for an adult not using a belt which results in a less safe car when someone wares a belt or is not an adult male. PS: EU microcar are terrable in high speed crashes, but there not designed for high speed driving either. So it's generally not a real world issue.
petewailes 11y ago
At the risk of sounding cynical and jaded, is anyone remotely surprised by this? The EU has been pushing car encouraging manufacturers to work harder at car safety for longer, and more effectively than the US has. Seat belts? Volvo. Air bags? First made standard in Mercs and Porsches, at a time when Ford and GM were lobbying against being made to include them. They became optional and then standard between the mid to late 90's, while legislation in the US made them a requirement in 98. Shaped airbags? Citroen. Side impact airbags? Volvo. Curtain airbags? BMW. The big difference though is the Euro NCAP ratings. It's near impossible to get a good score on them with just airbags, so the car manufacturers are forced to do more to score well, and it's become a solid marketing tool. On the other hand, FMVSS 208 (the American testing standard) are designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, so fire far too hard, causing a lot of issues. Whilst they'll stop you dying, they'll cause huge trauma and other issues in doing so. EU car safety technology regulation and manufacturer incentivisation is just a long way ahead, and has been for nearly two decades. So it's not surprising when something like this comes out. [edit to include important side note] Never wear anything flammable with sleeves while driving. Airbags are small explosions and can set flammable clothing on fire, causing severe burns &| death. If you need to be warmer, turn on the heater. Also, never put your thumbs near the centre of the steering wheel. You don't want to be trying to get out of a car after an accident with broken thumbs, which is what you get when the airbag deploys.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  > designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, What? To me it seems obivous that the right thing to do is have the seatbelt be part of the switch for the airbag -- no seatbelt, no detonation!
  - petewailes 11y ago
    It's because the legislation originates from a time when most cars didn't have them as a legal requirement, so the assumption is that someone won't have one or be wearing it, if the car has it. That bit has never been updated. It's exactly as insane as it sounds.
alkonaut 11y ago
I don't understand the issue here, cars sold in Europe already include many US cars obviously, and cars that sell in Europe are usually safety tested, for example by Euro NCAP. Here is a US car available in Europe, that has an excellent five star safety score in NCAP http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/cherokee/8871 http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/cherokee/8871 Now if "research actually established that American models are much less safe when it comes to front-side collisions" then those differences presumably apply to US models that aren't currently sold in Europe, and thus have never been tested here. If a model eventually will be sold in Europe (in any numbers) it will presumably be tested in Europe too, and those safety differences would show up in the tests? It doesn't worry me that some new car is approved for sale while not being safe, I wouldn't buy it until I see five Euro NCAP stars, and that I think goes for most European consumers. Relaxing the approval wouldn't change the testing! If US manufacturers want to sell cars in Europe they will have to not meet regulations but satisfy NCAP. (That said: cars like the new mustang might never be tested in NCAP, nor will it have to to compete with European performance cars which often aren't tested either, or score poorly. Performance car buyers don't seem very safety concerned so crashing expensive cars that sell in small numbers doesn't seem worthwhile).
- seren 11y ago
  I might be wrong but it seems the point of the TTIP is to say "Ok our norms are equivalent in the US and EU, so a US car does not need to pass EuroNCAP to be sold in Europe" Or rather we would align EuroNCAP on less demanding american norms, which would have the same result. A five star EuroNCAP post-TTIP would not be equivalent to a 5 star pre-TTIP.
  - alkonaut 11y ago
    EuroNCAP isn't a regulatory thing, and it isn't mandatory, it's basically just publicly fundded consumer information. Even if more models are allowed to be sold because they pass new "harmoinized" (read: relaxed) safety regulations after TTIP, they won't sell unless they score high on NCAP. (Specialty models like pickups, performance cars likely not that sensitive, but regular passenger cars and SUV's definitely would sell poorly without a high NCAP score). A US manufacturer knows this. I don't think (at least I hope) that NCAP would ever relax their testing procedures. Rather, they make it stricter every year, as they should.
JohnyLy 11y ago
This is outrageous but not surprising at all. In my opinion, more than a car safety issue, this is a money-making issue. EU pushes car manufacturers to build safer cars but this has a high cost. European customers respond well to marketing campaigns promoting safety. Therefore, those extra safety costs have a good return on investment. In the US, car safety is not considered as important as in EU because companies don't think there will be a good ROI. Because car manufacturers don't believe is viable enough, they tried to hide this report.
junto 11y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if we see lots of things like this come out over the next months. VW has got seriously burned, but I highly doubt that they are the only ones fiddling the playing field. More than likely, different manufacturer's (especially the big ones with lots of money) can afford to take their competitor's cars to pieces and look for areas where their competitors are cheating. They take them apart to gather engineering knowledge from competitors already. Then they leak that information. Why? Because if you are the only one to step in your own dog shit, then you stink and look stupid. If you make everyone step in their own dog shit, then everyone collectively stinks. If you can't avoid the smell, you learn to accept it. Somewhat like living in London in the 1600's.
sixQuarks 11y ago
Another reason why Tesla is so far ahead of the game. Elon Musk had the engineers design the vehicle to be as safe as possible, period. They didn't design the safety of the car with the crash tests in mind. They passed all the crash tests with flying colors as a side-effect of actually designing for safety.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  A lot of people think that airliner safety comes from the FAA hammering on Boeing. That's not true at all. It's the attitude of Boeing and Boeing engineers that make it safe. (I used to be a Boeing engineer on flight critical systems.) The worst nightmare of a Boeing engineer is an accident resulting from his design mistake. The worst for me was when the Alaska 717 went down because the stabilizer jackscrew failed. I worked on the 757 jackscrew. It was a while before I found out it wasn't the 757 design. Safety came from the engineers who knew what they were doing and would refuse to put their name on anything that they weren't sure about. I also know of instances where Boeing produced safer designs and had to lobby the FAA to get them to accept them. One example is using twin engines on overwater flights, rather than 3 or 4. The twin engines are statistically safer. I know of cases where Boeing designs were much safer than that required by the FAA, and the FAA later adopted the Boeing designs as a requirement. I've actually felt a lot safer flying after my time at Boeing and knowing the nuts and bolts of how they were made and the dedication and competence of the engineers in charge.
  - bruceboughton 11y ago
    > I also know of instances where Boeing produced safer designs and had to lobby the FAA to get them to accept them. One example is using twin engines on overwater flights, rather than 3 or 4. The twin engines are statistically safer. Interesting. Why do you think it is that twin engines are statistically safer? I thought redundancy was a normal part of the safety toolkit for planes.
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      I was told that more engines mean more possible failures, and that outweighed the advantage of redundancy. It's counterintuitive, but when you work the numbers for engines, it's true. It took Boeing a few years to convince the FAA.
Theodores 11y ago
The Independent have been running this story all week, few others have made it a story like they have in their papers (they do a tabloid version of the Independent too, not that anyone reads papers these days). American safety standards have worked well for the U.S. over the years, many European (and other) marques simply don't bother to put their cars through the tests or to spoil their designs with 'Duplo lego style' headlamps/bumpers and other odd U.S. requirements for what Americans consider 'safety'. It has been like this too with emissions over the years, why bother exporting to the U.S. when it is so much hassle to get a car good for the E.U. market dumbed down for the U.S. market? There is also the Chicken Tax (25% on light trucks), so there is a lot of protectionism under various guises of safety/pollution that has gone on over the years. No idea why things are going to be 'harmonised' now, however the status quo has left American motors retarded as far as engineering is concerned. This makes all American cars uncompetitive as far as the rest of the developed world is concerned. Tesla is probably the only exception. Other than the desirable Tesla, American cars have at best novelty value in Europe, only bought by people who have some other motive - stretched limos, that sort of thing. Safety itself is a complete joke regardless of what regulations you have. On a recent visit to Silverstone I could not help but notice how every car had a roll cage, harness seating and a driver accessible fire extinguisher amongst other modifications. And Silverstone does not have trees to hit at the side of the road, there is zero on-coming traffic and it is not exactly as if there are side-roads, or even unexpected twists in the track. Admittedly speeds are a tad higher than what you can expect on the school run, however, go at 40mph or higher in any consumer automobile and you are going to be heading for the hospital if you hit something hard like another car doing the same speed the other way. In fact I don't think the NCAP tests are ever above 40 mph for this very reason.
jbapple 11y ago
Where can I read the actual report?
- mzs 11y ago
  Here you go (pdf): http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/112977/103199.pdf http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/11297...
mzs 11y ago
The actual report (pdf) which is much better than this wordy article that only lists one data-point: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/112977/103199.pdf http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/11297... This study examined the hypotheses that vehicles meeting EU safety standards perform similarly to US regulated vehicles in the US driving environment, and vice versa. The analyses used three statistical approaches to “triangulate” evidence regarding differences in crash and injury risk. Separate analyses assessed crash avoidance technologies, including headlamps and mirrors. The results suggest that when controlling for differences in environment and exposure, vehicles meeting EU standards offer reduced risk of serious injury in frontal/side crashes and have driver-side mirrors that reduce risk in lane-change crashes better, while vehicles meeting US standards provide a lower risk of injury in rollovers and have headlamps that make pedestrians more conspicuous.

174 points by the-dude 11y ago

The worrying part here isn't that the cars are not safe, or that TTIP will allow certified cars from the US be sold in EU, but that the industry tries to hide it. And that there is apparently a gap between certification in the US and certification in the EU.

the-dude 11y ago
I think the timing is very interesting with regard to dieselgate.
- masklinn 11y ago
  Yes it's really fun all around, with EU manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent US emission regulations and US manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent EU safety regulations.
  - rplst8 11y ago
    I'd take more stringent safety standards over ridiculous emissions standards any day. Though, you could argue stricter safety standards fly in the face of emissions standards. More weight in the car, plus if the occupant survives, their carbon footprint is still there.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      The cheating EU cars are emitting 40x the pollution which is why air quality in Europe sucks.
      - adventured 11y ago
        At least in some places it certainly does: http://www.france24.com/en/20150320-paris-city-smog-pollution-plume-labs-hidalgo-public-transport-diesel http://www.france24.com/en/20150320-paris-city-smog-pollutio...
    - msabalau 11y ago
      People can decide to drive or not drive. Or at least decide to drive less. Kids with asthma and elderly can't decide not to breathe. Although evidently VW was content to effectively encourage them in the direction of not breathing.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    EU cars will be recalled all over the globe for cheating, there are no US recalls because they did not cheat. The EU cars violate EU regulations by cheating. It should be fun for them as it appears to be industry wide and state sanctioned. Maybe they can raise their pollution limits enough that they are not recalled in the EU.
gph 11y ago
Did they really try to hide it though? They didn't attempt to stop the report from being published. All they did was not promote it themselves. Is that a bit unethical? Perhaps, but saying they actively tried to hide or bury it makes it seem like they tried to stop the researchers from publishing their results or otherwise put pressure on them to fudge their results. Neither of those things happened. Honestly, I think the Independent is making a big deal out of it because of the current perception around the VW scandal. And everyone in this thread is eating it up. If this same thing happened without the VW scandal, I doubt anyone cares half as much.

Maarten88 11y ago

So the report was published normally, and this "burying" consists of lobyists not talking about it much? And therefore the press not writing about it much? Press and politics seem to be depending on lobyists to determine the agenda, and even do their work sometimes, which I think is a problem that has gotten out of hand, and not only in the car industry.

7952 11y ago
It is also a lack of civic society. There are not enough mainstream organisations fighting these issues.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  At this address you will find six pages of links to such organizations: https://www.aaafoundation.org/useful-links https://www.aaafoundation.org/useful-links

bencoder 11y ago

The most interesting part of this for me is that there is a difference at all. The difference is not explained in the article. I've never lived in the US; what is the difference between EU and US cars in this respect? Edit for clarity: What I meant, is /why/ is there such a difference in safety? What physical differences between the cars cause that?

adaml_623 11y ago
Please read the article again: "passengers in a typical EU model are 33 per cent safer in front-side collisions, an accident that often results in serious injury, than those in a typical US model." Less deaths and injuries if cars meet EU standards
- bencoder 11y ago
  I read that, I saw the difference. Sorry I wasn't clear in my original post. I meant: what causes the difference? Why is there such a big difference?
  - celticninja 11y ago
    Quite simply US car manufacturers don't have to make their cars as safe, as a result they include bare minimum safety requirements to pass regulation and save on costs. As another poster says it also seems that they do little R&D in this area either, again probably to save costs and to be able spend money designing more inefficient trucks for single occupants.
    - Retric 11y ago
      That's only part of it, US law requires safty systems to designed around for an adult not using a belt which results in a less safe car when someone wares a belt or is not an adult male. PS: EU microcar are terrable in high speed crashes, but there not designed for high speed driving either. So it's generally not a real world issue.

petewailes 11y ago

At the risk of sounding cynical and jaded, is anyone remotely surprised by this? The EU has been pushing car encouraging manufacturers to work harder at car safety for longer, and more effectively than the US has. Seat belts? Volvo. Air bags? First made standard in Mercs and Porsches, at a time when Ford and GM were lobbying against being made to include them. They became optional and then standard between the mid to late 90's, while legislation in the US made them a requirement in 98. Shaped airbags? Citroen. Side impact airbags? Volvo. Curtain airbags? BMW. The big difference though is the Euro NCAP ratings. It's near impossible to get a good score on them with just airbags, so the car manufacturers are forced to do more to score well, and it's become a solid marketing tool. On the other hand, FMVSS 208 (the American testing standard) are designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, so fire far too hard, causing a lot of issues. Whilst they'll stop you dying, they'll cause huge trauma and other issues in doing so. EU car safety technology regulation and manufacturer incentivisation is just a long way ahead, and has been for nearly two decades. So it's not surprising when something like this comes out. [edit to include important side note] Never wear anything flammable with sleeves while driving. Airbags are small explosions and can set flammable clothing on fire, causing severe burns &| death. If you need to be warmer, turn on the heater. Also, never put your thumbs near the centre of the steering wheel. You don't want to be trying to get out of a car after an accident with broken thumbs, which is what you get when the airbag deploys.

alkonaut 11y ago
> designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, What? To me it seems obivous that the right thing to do is have the seatbelt be part of the switch for the airbag -- no seatbelt, no detonation!
- petewailes 11y ago
  It's because the legislation originates from a time when most cars didn't have them as a legal requirement, so the assumption is that someone won't have one or be wearing it, if the car has it. That bit has never been updated. It's exactly as insane as it sounds.

alkonaut 11y ago

I don't understand the issue here, cars sold in Europe already include many US cars obviously, and cars that sell in Europe are usually safety tested, for example by Euro NCAP. Here is a US car available in Europe, that has an excellent five star safety score in NCAP http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/cherokee/8871 http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/cherokee/8871 Now if "research actually established that American models are much less safe when it comes to front-side collisions" then those differences presumably apply to US models that aren't currently sold in Europe, and thus have never been tested here. If a model eventually will be sold in Europe (in any numbers) it will presumably be tested in Europe too, and those safety differences would show up in the tests? It doesn't worry me that some new car is approved for sale while not being safe, I wouldn't buy it until I see five Euro NCAP stars, and that I think goes for most European consumers. Relaxing the approval wouldn't change the testing! If US manufacturers want to sell cars in Europe they will have to not meet regulations but satisfy NCAP. (That said: cars like the new mustang might never be tested in NCAP, nor will it have to to compete with European performance cars which often aren't tested either, or score poorly. Performance car buyers don't seem very safety concerned so crashing expensive cars that sell in small numbers doesn't seem worthwhile).

seren 11y ago
I might be wrong but it seems the point of the TTIP is to say "Ok our norms are equivalent in the US and EU, so a US car does not need to pass EuroNCAP to be sold in Europe" Or rather we would align EuroNCAP on less demanding american norms, which would have the same result. A five star EuroNCAP post-TTIP would not be equivalent to a 5 star pre-TTIP.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  EuroNCAP isn't a regulatory thing, and it isn't mandatory, it's basically just publicly fundded consumer information. Even if more models are allowed to be sold because they pass new "harmoinized" (read: relaxed) safety regulations after TTIP, they won't sell unless they score high on NCAP. (Specialty models like pickups, performance cars likely not that sensitive, but regular passenger cars and SUV's definitely would sell poorly without a high NCAP score). A US manufacturer knows this. I don't think (at least I hope) that NCAP would ever relax their testing procedures. Rather, they make it stricter every year, as they should.

JohnyLy 11y ago

This is outrageous but not surprising at all. In my opinion, more than a car safety issue, this is a money-making issue. EU pushes car manufacturers to build safer cars but this has a high cost. European customers respond well to marketing campaigns promoting safety. Therefore, those extra safety costs have a good return on investment. In the US, car safety is not considered as important as in EU because companies don't think there will be a good ROI. Because car manufacturers don't believe is viable enough, they tried to hide this report.

junto 11y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if we see lots of things like this come out over the next months. VW has got seriously burned, but I highly doubt that they are the only ones fiddling the playing field. More than likely, different manufacturer's (especially the big ones with lots of money) can afford to take their competitor's cars to pieces and look for areas where their competitors are cheating. They take them apart to gather engineering knowledge from competitors already. Then they leak that information. Why? Because if you are the only one to step in your own dog shit, then you stink and look stupid. If you make everyone step in their own dog shit, then everyone collectively stinks. If you can't avoid the smell, you learn to accept it. Somewhat like living in London in the 1600's.

sixQuarks 11y ago

Another reason why Tesla is so far ahead of the game. Elon Musk had the engineers design the vehicle to be as safe as possible, period. They didn't design the safety of the car with the crash tests in mind. They passed all the crash tests with flying colors as a side-effect of actually designing for safety.

WalterBright 11y ago
A lot of people think that airliner safety comes from the FAA hammering on Boeing. That's not true at all. It's the attitude of Boeing and Boeing engineers that make it safe. (I used to be a Boeing engineer on flight critical systems.) The worst nightmare of a Boeing engineer is an accident resulting from his design mistake. The worst for me was when the Alaska 717 went down because the stabilizer jackscrew failed. I worked on the 757 jackscrew. It was a while before I found out it wasn't the 757 design. Safety came from the engineers who knew what they were doing and would refuse to put their name on anything that they weren't sure about. I also know of instances where Boeing produced safer designs and had to lobby the FAA to get them to accept them. One example is using twin engines on overwater flights, rather than 3 or 4. The twin engines are statistically safer. I know of cases where Boeing designs were much safer than that required by the FAA, and the FAA later adopted the Boeing designs as a requirement. I've actually felt a lot safer flying after my time at Boeing and knowing the nuts and bolts of how they were made and the dedication and competence of the engineers in charge.
- bruceboughton 11y ago
  > I also know of instances where Boeing produced safer designs and had to lobby the FAA to get them to accept them. One example is using twin engines on overwater flights, rather than 3 or 4. The twin engines are statistically safer. Interesting. Why do you think it is that twin engines are statistically safer? I thought redundancy was a normal part of the safety toolkit for planes.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    I was told that more engines mean more possible failures, and that outweighed the advantage of redundancy. It's counterintuitive, but when you work the numbers for engines, it's true. It took Boeing a few years to convince the FAA.

Theodores 11y ago

The Independent have been running this story all week, few others have made it a story like they have in their papers (they do a tabloid version of the Independent too, not that anyone reads papers these days). American safety standards have worked well for the U.S. over the years, many European (and other) marques simply don't bother to put their cars through the tests or to spoil their designs with 'Duplo lego style' headlamps/bumpers and other odd U.S. requirements for what Americans consider 'safety'. It has been like this too with emissions over the years, why bother exporting to the U.S. when it is so much hassle to get a car good for the E.U. market dumbed down for the U.S. market? There is also the Chicken Tax (25% on light trucks), so there is a lot of protectionism under various guises of safety/pollution that has gone on over the years. No idea why things are going to be 'harmonised' now, however the status quo has left American motors retarded as far as engineering is concerned. This makes all American cars uncompetitive as far as the rest of the developed world is concerned. Tesla is probably the only exception. Other than the desirable Tesla, American cars have at best novelty value in Europe, only bought by people who have some other motive - stretched limos, that sort of thing. Safety itself is a complete joke regardless of what regulations you have. On a recent visit to Silverstone I could not help but notice how every car had a roll cage, harness seating and a driver accessible fire extinguisher amongst other modifications. And Silverstone does not have trees to hit at the side of the road, there is zero on-coming traffic and it is not exactly as if there are side-roads, or even unexpected twists in the track. Admittedly speeds are a tad higher than what you can expect on the school run, however, go at 40mph or higher in any consumer automobile and you are going to be heading for the hospital if you hit something hard like another car doing the same speed the other way. In fact I don't think the NCAP tests are ever above 40 mph for this very reason.

jbapple 11y ago

Where can I read the actual report?

mzs 11y ago
Here you go (pdf): http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/112977/103199.pdf http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/11297...

mzs 11y ago

The actual report (pdf) which is much better than this wordy article that only lists one data-point: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/112977/103199.pdf http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/11297... This study examined the hypotheses that vehicles meeting EU safety standards perform similarly to US regulated vehicles in the US driving environment, and vice versa. The analyses used three statistical approaches to “triangulate” evidence regarding differences in crash and injury risk. Separate analyses assessed crash avoidance technologies, including headlamps and mirrors. The results suggest that when controlling for differences in environment and exposure, vehicles meeting EU standards offer reduced risk of serious injury in frontal/side crashes and have driver-side mirrors that reduce risk in lane-change crashes better, while vehicles meeting US standards provide a lower risk of injury in rollovers and have headlamps that make pedestrians more conspicuous.