11 ms·

How do cars fare in crash tests they're not specifically optimized for? (2020)

111 points by ndr 5y ago

ak217 5y ago
This article doesn't have a date, which is unfortunate. But on this topic, IIHS recently published this: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/small-suvs-struggle-in-new-tougher-side-test https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/small-suvs-struggle-in-new-...
- argonaut 5y ago
  That is mentioned in an update at the end of the article (so the article was last updated a few weeks ago).
FridayoLeary 5y ago
>Car manufacturers, if so inclined, could optimize their cars for crash test scores instead of actual safety. I think it's fair to say that cars are incredibly safe compared to 40 years ago. But crash safety compromises new cars in so many ways, it's a bit of a pity.
- throwaway946513 5y ago
  Are you referring to the 'crumple-zone' and energy absorbing structures of the vehicles?
  - jabroni_salad 5y ago
    I've made my peace with body design but I really don't like the huge pillars they are putting in cars these days. I test drove a Mazda 3 recently and visibility in all directions was really poor compared to my current 09 Fit. The sensor suite is cool but it's not like airplanes where operators can be expected to pick up an instrument rating.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      Pillars don't have to obscure visibility. Yes, we have curtain airbags now, but you've got airbags inside the pillars of your Fit. The difference between the pillars on your 09 Fit and the Mazda 3 are mostly design decisions. The Fit interior is just an insanely good design. The angle and positioning of the pillar in relation to the driver are huge factors.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    What's the formula for KE? What's the dominant term in that equation? What's the exponent on that term? Anyone telling you that energy absorbing structures are of significant value except at a very narrow range of speeds and impact type is peddling falsehood. The bulk of the improvement since the 90s (well into the era of crumple zones, remember they are a prerequisite for airbags) has been from better airbags, side curtain airbags, pre-tensioners and better modeling software that allows those things as well as seats and seatbelts to be engineered to levels that were unheard of even a decade ago. Whether you hit hard objects in a crash has a lot less to do with luck these days. Stronger cabins are a plus (especially for non-frontal crashes) too.
ericpauley 5y ago
> All of those models scored Good on the driver side small overlap test, indicating that when Honda increased the safety on the driver's side to score Good on the driver's side test, they didn't apply the same changes to the passenger side. This is an especially concerning observation for Honda. I'm curious if there's any more detail on this or if there's a plausible reason aside from gaming the benchmarks (e.g., the positioning of firewall-forward components might naturally favor small-overlap protection on the driver's side, or a steering-wheel mounted airbag would naturally perform better than dash-mounted).
- mattlondon 5y ago
  I agree this seems especially odd since Honda are Japanese and in Japan the driver sits on the right (as they do in the UK, Australia, NZ and some others). I doesn't make sense for them to skimp on driver-side protection in these markets.
  - ranger_danger 5y ago
    Honda domestic models are actually not as ubiquitous as you might think in Japan. They're typically larger than your average kei car; the roads are narrower, the speed limit is lower, and the crash safety standards just aren't the same as other countries.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      The current generation Accord went on sale in the US more than 2 years before it went on sale in Japan. There aren't any factories even producing the Accord in Japan. Any of them that exist there are imported. It's primarily a car designed for the US (and other) markets. The most popular Honda and Toyota models are just as American (or more so) than anything the Big 3 produces. Some of them are even designed in Detroit.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  It seems like, even if intentional, that it’s a sensible optimization. Among multi-car collisions, drivers’ side small offset collisions I’d expect to be vastly more common than passenger side small offset collisions. In both single and multi car collisions, we will assume there’s a driver in all cars, but less than 100% chance for there to be a front-seat passenger in all cars.
lost-found 5y ago
As expected, Volvo is the king. I’ve always taken the “Teslas are the safest” with a huge grain of salt.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  So you take a one page HTML post + Volvo marketing as "proof" of your decision?
  - lost-found 5y ago
    Nope, I take IIHS’s tests as proof. Nice try though!
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Anything Tesla is tough because of the mobilized army of fans. Electric cars are really amazing in some scenarios though - I was a passenger in a Tesla in a winter accident that would have been a rollover event in many cars… we ended up in a flat spin and in a ditch instead. Volvo has always made safety a key value. I remember picking up my dad from a police station after he had been in a 50 car pileup in the 90s. His Volvo was unrecognizable, but he walked away, only needed help from a policeman to cut the seatbelt off as the buckle release wasn’t accessible.
ben7799 5y ago
This article seems to be ultra out of date and it doesn't cite the specific crash data showing why they grouped cars the way they did. For example he's grouping BMW and Mercedes right below Volvo.. at least in the case of the Frontal Small Overlap test that doesn't seem right at all. The Small Overlap Frontal test was introduced in 2012. The Honda Accord in 2013 was acing that test, BMW and Mercedes were failing it miserably for a few more years. The 2013 Accord IIRC should have been rated at least as high as the Volvos. I have a 2013 Subaru, it got 5 stars in the frontal small overlap test as well, years ahead of the BMWs and Mercedes. Something is just off about the whole thing if you remember back to when these tests were introduced and you were looking at buying a car. Tesla pretty much never got anything but 5 stars in these 2 tests IIRC, not sure where that came from. The article would have been much better if it linked to the specific crash data to support the claims. IIHS has all that data publicly available IIRC. It is good stuff to look at when buying a car. BMW, Mercedes, and Toyota/Lexus were the real outliers who had appeared to try to "game" the old benchmarks and then failed these new tests the most spectacularly.
- lost-found 5y ago
  > Tesla pretty much never got anything but 5 stars in these 2 tests IIRC, not sure where that came from You’re not recalling correctly. The Model S got an “acceptable” rating on the small frontal offset test in 2017: https://www.slashgear.com/tesla-model-s-again-fails-to-earn-top-safety-pick-grade-06490732/ https://www.slashgear.com/tesla-model-s-again-fails-to-earn-...
  - ben7799 5y ago
    Right but he's equating "Acceptable" to worse than "Poor" as the German cars were achieving in the same time frame. The Tesla was "Acceptable" for years where the German cars were "Poor". Which is worse? Also he's attributing poor passenger side tests to malice when the real reason might be that the engineering requirements are very different because the steering column doesn't exist on the passenger side.
    - lost-found 5y ago
dr_dshiv 5y ago
I heard from my wife that cars are designed for men— that is, the crash test dummies are all designed to represent “the average male”. I was really surprised by this. https://kjonnsforskning.no/en/2019/06/cars-are-still-designed-men https://kjonnsforskning.no/en/2019/06/cars-are-still-designe...
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  What country is that? Definitely not the US. You can read about the different types here: https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies
  - lambdasquirrel 5y ago
    That only changed relatively recently. I think in the last decade? Volvo was the only company testing on female dummies for much longer. They are the only company doing testing with models of pregnant women. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevetengler/2021/02/16/volvo-cars-cared-about-safety-long-before-the-metoo-movement/?sh=63580fdf7012 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevetengler/2021/02/16/volvo-c...
- MaxBareiss 5y ago
  Not all crash test dummies are 50th percentile males[1]. In the United States: Regulatory Frontal: 50th male in front-left and front-right, or 5th female in front-left and front-right Regulatory Side, struck by SUV: 50th male Regulatory Side, struck by pole: 50th male NCAP Frontal: 50th male in front-left, 5th female in front-right NCAP Side, struck by SUV: 50th male in front-left, 5th female in rear-left NCAP Side, struck by pole: 50th male As you can see, most tests are done with male dummies, and almost no females dummies are drivers. Fortunately, there's money that's just been allocated by Congress for doing more female dummy testing. [1] Also important to note that, at least in the United States, the percentiles were determined in the 80s and Americans have gotten fatter.
- danielvf 5y ago
  As a kid in the 1990's, I got to go to the biggest crash test facility in the US, the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety. There were crash dummies of different sizes all the way down to kids and infants. Here's a list of current US dummies, including average males, extra small females, kids, etc: https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies
Dunedan 5y ago
A month ago Tesla published a video showing their Crash Lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KR2N_Q8ep8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KR2N_Q8ep8 What they claim to do there is to use their real world data to try to optimize for real crashs and not for crash tests.
enragedcacti 5y ago
> Unfortunately, if we get into a car accident, we don't get to ask the driver of the vehicle we're colliding with to change their location, angle of impact, and speed, in order for the collision to comply with an IIHS, NHTSA, or *NCAP, test protocol. I'm smitten with the stupid idea of teaching your self-driving car that when a crash can't be avoided it should attempt to make the crash as close as possible to the nearest crash test protocol of the jurisdiction it's operating in.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Some cars actually do change their geometry prior to a crash! Things like raise the suspension on the side about to be impacted so the car is higher!
  - turtlebits 5y ago
    Mercedes interestingly has a system to protect your ears by playing a sound pre-crash as well. https://www.mercedesbenzofnatick.com/new-features-mercedes-benz-comand-system.htm https://www.mercedesbenzofnatick.com/new-features-mercedes-b...
    - Arrath 5y ago
      Wow I wouldn't have even thought about a pre-crash sound being beneficial. Really interesting, thanks for the link.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > when a crash can't be avoided it should attempt to make the crash as close as possible to the nearest crash test protocol of the jurisdiction it's operating in Like quickly put a dummy in your seat and throw you out?
  - ketralnis 5y ago
    My motorcycle safety course said that in a car accident the safest place for you is inside the car in the middle of all of those airbag deployments, but in a motorcycle accident the safest place is to be thrown as far away from all of the spinning colliding sliding bending grinding metal as possible
mywittyname 5y ago
The title feels pretty disingenuous here because the small overlap test is substantially more difficult than the full frontal, or half overlap tests that were tested previously. As was discovered when looking at real world crash data, the improvement in outcomes from the 50% overlap tests fell off dramatically in 10% overlap situations. Hence, why a new test specifically for that was introduced. I think a better way to look at how cars fair in crash tests that they are not "specifically optimized" for is to look at results from real world crash data. Like, among various vehicles which received top marks in <crash test>, how did buyers of those vehicles fair in real world accidents that the crash tests are designed to simulate.
- hangonhn 5y ago
  Is this the sort of statistics you're looking for? https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...
intrasight 5y ago
I'm still driving my 2004 Volvo XC70. It crossed 100K miles this summer. My thinking is to replace it next year with a newer XC70. I love the shape and form factor. Wish they were still made. While I feel safe in the case, I know that I'm missing out on new active safety features.
- muro 5y ago
  The XC70 is no longer manufactured - are you going to get an older one?
  - intrasight 5y ago
    Yes. "newer" - like a 2015. Or I wait until 200K miles, and get: a. Electric Volvo? b. Won't even need a car by then?
GhettoComputers 5y ago
>Another issue is crash test dummy overfitting. For a long time, adult NHSTA and IIHS tests used a 1970s 50%-ile male dummy, which is 5'9" and 171lbs. Regulators called for a female dummy in 1980 but due to budget cutbacks during the Reagan era, initial plans were shelved and the NHSTA didn't put one in a car until 2003. The female dummy is a scaled down version of the male dummy, scaled down to 5%-ile 1970s height and weight (4'11", 108lbs; another model is 4'11", 97lbs). In frontal crash tests, when a female dummy is used, it's always a passenger (a 5%-ile woman is in the driver's seat in one NHSTA side crash test and the IIHS side crash test). For reference, in 2019, the average weight of a U.S. adult male was 198 lbs and the average weight of a U.S. adult female was 171 lbs. Women are neglected in testing of every standard. Essentially they’re benchmarks of computer performance in human form, with the most hopeful data being used. It’s much harder to account for women who have more variation such as hips, breasts, pregnancy status, corporate would rather rather tell you the best results with the cheapest and the best case results. The weight of the dummies, the height, and the lack of variation is both cost cutting, testing the most healthy models, and way to bypass the regulations with clever tricks that most people trust because there aren’t more data sources and it’s a lot of effort to learn more. Most things that are tested are, especially pharmaceutical drugs. They use men’s dosages and at most change bu weight but ignore important factors that are women’s issues since it’s easier to neglect it lazily, then blame the patient’s biology rather than the doctor’s incompetence and lack of research, but the lack of information that drug companies give. Paid drug trials are often signed up for by more risk taking males, and hormone cycles of women make drugs have more variation they’d rather sweep under the rug, you also see the difference in showdogs winners where a female dog’s hormone cycle like her period can destroy performance. Another cost cutting example is the lack of long term effects, they use mice models rather than dogs because it’s cheaper and shows less long term effects, win/win for hiding these results until it’s discovered by real world usage. Something encouraging though are computer physics simulations. Volvo has been at the forefront of safety, they’re the top rated, tested on women before regulations forced others to, making the safety belt and not patenting it, encouraging its usage due to their focus and morality. The results don’t surprise me.
bongoman37 5y ago
This is Goodhart's law in action. If the score doesn't actually reflect how safe the car is then the the parameters of the score ought to be modified. Maybe a single score doesn't capture everything and you may give a different score to someone looking for a car for individual driving vs couples vs a family with young kids.
zip1234 5y ago
Other categories not tested for--how do people outside the vehicle fare? How do occupants of another vehicle fare?
- avhon1 5y ago
  Vehicles are tested for pedestrian crashworthiness. Modern cars are even tested on their ability to detect pedestrians and avoid hitting them. https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-explained/vulnerable-road-user-vru-protection/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...
  - zip1234 5y ago
    Seems like that is only European cars: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/04/28/vehicle-safety-standards-dont-protect-pedestrians/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/04/28/vehicle-safety-standa...
diebeforei485 5y ago
What Tesla did IIHS test in 2012, the Roadster?
PeterisP 5y ago
I think it's appropriate to consider that this particular test ("driver-side small overlap") is not a random situation to which the car simply isn't specifically optimized for, but rather a de facto adversarial example - the particular model of accident was chosen because people observed that this type of accident seems to cause a lot of injuries, i.e. that this test intentionally targeted a specific known weakness of the current cars; so it's no wonder that the initial test results confirmed that. If the average car would already (pre-modifications) do well in driver-side small overlap situations, then this type of crash would simply not get chosen for extra testing.
dang 5y ago
Discussed at the time: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23689538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23689538 - June 2020 (343 comments)
malf 5y ago
Do we then need to discount for “the particular failure modes of the most popular models are more likely to appear in the overall accident stats, and thus more likely to be used for the next set of test protocols”? :)
yk 5y ago
Over fitting to crash test benchmarks is a kinda obvious problem. From an engineering perspective one needs to have a good idea how a crash looks like to be able to optimize safe vehicles. The two options are, to write the standard oneself, that is a lot of hard work, or to go to the crash test standards, who hopefully did precisely that hard work, and optimize for the standard crashes.
mrslave 5y ago
Goodhart's law: Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

111 points by ndr 5y ago

This article doesn't have a date, which is unfortunate. But on this topic, IIHS recently published this: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/small-suvs-struggle-in-new-tougher-side-test https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/small-suvs-struggle-in-new-...

argonaut 5y ago
That is mentioned in an update at the end of the article (so the article was last updated a few weeks ago).

FridayoLeary 5y ago

>Car manufacturers, if so inclined, could optimize their cars for crash test scores instead of actual safety. I think it's fair to say that cars are incredibly safe compared to 40 years ago. But crash safety compromises new cars in so many ways, it's a bit of a pity.

throwaway946513 5y ago
Are you referring to the 'crumple-zone' and energy absorbing structures of the vehicles?
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  I've made my peace with body design but I really don't like the huge pillars they are putting in cars these days. I test drove a Mazda 3 recently and visibility in all directions was really poor compared to my current 09 Fit. The sensor suite is cool but it's not like airplanes where operators can be expected to pick up an instrument rating.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Pillars don't have to obscure visibility. Yes, we have curtain airbags now, but you've got airbags inside the pillars of your Fit. The difference between the pillars on your 09 Fit and the Mazda 3 are mostly design decisions. The Fit interior is just an insanely good design. The angle and positioning of the pillar in relation to the driver are huge factors.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  What's the formula for KE? What's the dominant term in that equation? What's the exponent on that term? Anyone telling you that energy absorbing structures are of significant value except at a very narrow range of speeds and impact type is peddling falsehood. The bulk of the improvement since the 90s (well into the era of crumple zones, remember they are a prerequisite for airbags) has been from better airbags, side curtain airbags, pre-tensioners and better modeling software that allows those things as well as seats and seatbelts to be engineered to levels that were unheard of even a decade ago. Whether you hit hard objects in a crash has a lot less to do with luck these days. Stronger cabins are a plus (especially for non-frontal crashes) too.

ericpauley 5y ago

> All of those models scored Good on the driver side small overlap test, indicating that when Honda increased the safety on the driver's side to score Good on the driver's side test, they didn't apply the same changes to the passenger side. This is an especially concerning observation for Honda. I'm curious if there's any more detail on this or if there's a plausible reason aside from gaming the benchmarks (e.g., the positioning of firewall-forward components might naturally favor small-overlap protection on the driver's side, or a steering-wheel mounted airbag would naturally perform better than dash-mounted).

mattlondon 5y ago
I agree this seems especially odd since Honda are Japanese and in Japan the driver sits on the right (as they do in the UK, Australia, NZ and some others). I doesn't make sense for them to skimp on driver-side protection in these markets.
- ranger_danger 5y ago
  Honda domestic models are actually not as ubiquitous as you might think in Japan. They're typically larger than your average kei car; the roads are narrower, the speed limit is lower, and the crash safety standards just aren't the same as other countries.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    The current generation Accord went on sale in the US more than 2 years before it went on sale in Japan. There aren't any factories even producing the Accord in Japan. Any of them that exist there are imported. It's primarily a car designed for the US (and other) markets. The most popular Honda and Toyota models are just as American (or more so) than anything the Big 3 produces. Some of them are even designed in Detroit.
sokoloff 5y ago
It seems like, even if intentional, that it’s a sensible optimization. Among multi-car collisions, drivers’ side small offset collisions I’d expect to be vastly more common than passenger side small offset collisions. In both single and multi car collisions, we will assume there’s a driver in all cars, but less than 100% chance for there to be a front-seat passenger in all cars.

lost-found 5y ago

As expected, Volvo is the king. I’ve always taken the “Teslas are the safest” with a huge grain of salt.

brianwawok 5y ago
So you take a one page HTML post + Volvo marketing as "proof" of your decision?
- lost-found 5y ago
  Nope, I take IIHS’s tests as proof. Nice try though!
Spooky23 5y ago
Anything Tesla is tough because of the mobilized army of fans. Electric cars are really amazing in some scenarios though - I was a passenger in a Tesla in a winter accident that would have been a rollover event in many cars… we ended up in a flat spin and in a ditch instead. Volvo has always made safety a key value. I remember picking up my dad from a police station after he had been in a 50 car pileup in the 90s. His Volvo was unrecognizable, but he walked away, only needed help from a policeman to cut the seatbelt off as the buckle release wasn’t accessible.

ben7799 5y ago

This article seems to be ultra out of date and it doesn't cite the specific crash data showing why they grouped cars the way they did. For example he's grouping BMW and Mercedes right below Volvo.. at least in the case of the Frontal Small Overlap test that doesn't seem right at all. The Small Overlap Frontal test was introduced in 2012. The Honda Accord in 2013 was acing that test, BMW and Mercedes were failing it miserably for a few more years. The 2013 Accord IIRC should have been rated at least as high as the Volvos. I have a 2013 Subaru, it got 5 stars in the frontal small overlap test as well, years ahead of the BMWs and Mercedes. Something is just off about the whole thing if you remember back to when these tests were introduced and you were looking at buying a car. Tesla pretty much never got anything but 5 stars in these 2 tests IIRC, not sure where that came from. The article would have been much better if it linked to the specific crash data to support the claims. IIHS has all that data publicly available IIRC. It is good stuff to look at when buying a car. BMW, Mercedes, and Toyota/Lexus were the real outliers who had appeared to try to "game" the old benchmarks and then failed these new tests the most spectacularly.

lost-found 5y ago
> Tesla pretty much never got anything but 5 stars in these 2 tests IIRC, not sure where that came from You’re not recalling correctly. The Model S got an “acceptable” rating on the small frontal offset test in 2017: https://www.slashgear.com/tesla-model-s-again-fails-to-earn-top-safety-pick-grade-06490732/ https://www.slashgear.com/tesla-model-s-again-fails-to-earn-...
- ben7799 5y ago
  Right but he's equating "Acceptable" to worse than "Poor" as the German cars were achieving in the same time frame. The Tesla was "Acceptable" for years where the German cars were "Poor". Which is worse? Also he's attributing poor passenger side tests to malice when the real reason might be that the engineering requirements are very different because the steering column doesn't exist on the passenger side.
  - lost-found 5y ago

dr_dshiv 5y ago

I heard from my wife that cars are designed for men— that is, the crash test dummies are all designed to represent “the average male”. I was really surprised by this. https://kjonnsforskning.no/en/2019/06/cars-are-still-designed-men https://kjonnsforskning.no/en/2019/06/cars-are-still-designe...

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
What country is that? Definitely not the US. You can read about the different types here: https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies
- lambdasquirrel 5y ago
  That only changed relatively recently. I think in the last decade? Volvo was the only company testing on female dummies for much longer. They are the only company doing testing with models of pregnant women. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevetengler/2021/02/16/volvo-cars-cared-about-safety-long-before-the-metoo-movement/?sh=63580fdf7012 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevetengler/2021/02/16/volvo-c...
MaxBareiss 5y ago
Not all crash test dummies are 50th percentile males[1]. In the United States: Regulatory Frontal: 50th male in front-left and front-right, or 5th female in front-left and front-right Regulatory Side, struck by SUV: 50th male Regulatory Side, struck by pole: 50th male NCAP Frontal: 50th male in front-left, 5th female in front-right NCAP Side, struck by SUV: 50th male in front-left, 5th female in rear-left NCAP Side, struck by pole: 50th male As you can see, most tests are done with male dummies, and almost no females dummies are drivers. Fortunately, there's money that's just been allocated by Congress for doing more female dummy testing. [1] Also important to note that, at least in the United States, the percentiles were determined in the 80s and Americans have gotten fatter.
danielvf 5y ago
As a kid in the 1990's, I got to go to the biggest crash test facility in the US, the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety. There were crash dummies of different sizes all the way down to kids and infants. Here's a list of current US dummies, including average males, extra small females, kids, etc: https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsas-crash-test-dummies

Dunedan 5y ago

A month ago Tesla published a video showing their Crash Lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KR2N_Q8ep8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KR2N_Q8ep8 What they claim to do there is to use their real world data to try to optimize for real crashs and not for crash tests.

enragedcacti 5y ago

> Unfortunately, if we get into a car accident, we don't get to ask the driver of the vehicle we're colliding with to change their location, angle of impact, and speed, in order for the collision to comply with an IIHS, NHTSA, or *NCAP, test protocol. I'm smitten with the stupid idea of teaching your self-driving car that when a crash can't be avoided it should attempt to make the crash as close as possible to the nearest crash test protocol of the jurisdiction it's operating in.

chrisseaton 5y ago
Some cars actually do change their geometry prior to a crash! Things like raise the suspension on the side about to be impacted so the car is higher!
- turtlebits 5y ago
  Mercedes interestingly has a system to protect your ears by playing a sound pre-crash as well. https://www.mercedesbenzofnatick.com/new-features-mercedes-benz-comand-system.htm https://www.mercedesbenzofnatick.com/new-features-mercedes-b...
  - Arrath 5y ago
    Wow I wouldn't have even thought about a pre-crash sound being beneficial. Really interesting, thanks for the link.
jhgb 5y ago
> when a crash can't be avoided it should attempt to make the crash as close as possible to the nearest crash test protocol of the jurisdiction it's operating in Like quickly put a dummy in your seat and throw you out?
- ketralnis 5y ago
  My motorcycle safety course said that in a car accident the safest place for you is inside the car in the middle of all of those airbag deployments, but in a motorcycle accident the safest place is to be thrown as far away from all of the spinning colliding sliding bending grinding metal as possible

mywittyname 5y ago

The title feels pretty disingenuous here because the small overlap test is substantially more difficult than the full frontal, or half overlap tests that were tested previously. As was discovered when looking at real world crash data, the improvement in outcomes from the 50% overlap tests fell off dramatically in 10% overlap situations. Hence, why a new test specifically for that was introduced. I think a better way to look at how cars fair in crash tests that they are not "specifically optimized" for is to look at results from real world crash data. Like, among various vehicles which received top marks in <crash test>, how did buyers of those vehicles fair in real world accidents that the crash tests are designed to simulate.

hangonhn 5y ago
Is this the sort of statistics you're looking for? https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

intrasight 5y ago

I'm still driving my 2004 Volvo XC70. It crossed 100K miles this summer. My thinking is to replace it next year with a newer XC70. I love the shape and form factor. Wish they were still made. While I feel safe in the case, I know that I'm missing out on new active safety features.

muro 5y ago
The XC70 is no longer manufactured - are you going to get an older one?
- intrasight 5y ago
  Yes. "newer" - like a 2015. Or I wait until 200K miles, and get: a. Electric Volvo? b. Won't even need a car by then?

GhettoComputers 5y ago

>Another issue is crash test dummy overfitting. For a long time, adult NHSTA and IIHS tests used a 1970s 50%-ile male dummy, which is 5'9" and 171lbs. Regulators called for a female dummy in 1980 but due to budget cutbacks during the Reagan era, initial plans were shelved and the NHSTA didn't put one in a car until 2003. The female dummy is a scaled down version of the male dummy, scaled down to 5%-ile 1970s height and weight (4'11", 108lbs; another model is 4'11", 97lbs). In frontal crash tests, when a female dummy is used, it's always a passenger (a 5%-ile woman is in the driver's seat in one NHSTA side crash test and the IIHS side crash test). For reference, in 2019, the average weight of a U.S. adult male was 198 lbs and the average weight of a U.S. adult female was 171 lbs. Women are neglected in testing of every standard. Essentially they’re benchmarks of computer performance in human form, with the most hopeful data being used. It’s much harder to account for women who have more variation such as hips, breasts, pregnancy status, corporate would rather rather tell you the best results with the cheapest and the best case results. The weight of the dummies, the height, and the lack of variation is both cost cutting, testing the most healthy models, and way to bypass the regulations with clever tricks that most people trust because there aren’t more data sources and it’s a lot of effort to learn more. Most things that are tested are, especially pharmaceutical drugs. They use men’s dosages and at most change bu weight but ignore important factors that are women’s issues since it’s easier to neglect it lazily, then blame the patient’s biology rather than the doctor’s incompetence and lack of research, but the lack of information that drug companies give. Paid drug trials are often signed up for by more risk taking males, and hormone cycles of women make drugs have more variation they’d rather sweep under the rug, you also see the difference in showdogs winners where a female dog’s hormone cycle like her period can destroy performance. Another cost cutting example is the lack of long term effects, they use mice models rather than dogs because it’s cheaper and shows less long term effects, win/win for hiding these results until it’s discovered by real world usage. Something encouraging though are computer physics simulations. Volvo has been at the forefront of safety, they’re the top rated, tested on women before regulations forced others to, making the safety belt and not patenting it, encouraging its usage due to their focus and morality. The results don’t surprise me.

bongoman37 5y ago

This is Goodhart's law in action. If the score doesn't actually reflect how safe the car is then the the parameters of the score ought to be modified. Maybe a single score doesn't capture everything and you may give a different score to someone looking for a car for individual driving vs couples vs a family with young kids.

zip1234 5y ago

Other categories not tested for--how do people outside the vehicle fare? How do occupants of another vehicle fare?

avhon1 5y ago
Vehicles are tested for pedestrian crashworthiness. Modern cars are even tested on their ability to detect pedestrians and avoid hitting them. https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-explained/vulnerable-road-user-vru-protection/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...
- zip1234 5y ago
  Seems like that is only European cars: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/04/28/vehicle-safety-standards-dont-protect-pedestrians/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/04/28/vehicle-safety-standa...

diebeforei485 5y ago

What Tesla did IIHS test in 2012, the Roadster?

PeterisP 5y ago

I think it's appropriate to consider that this particular test ("driver-side small overlap") is not a random situation to which the car simply isn't specifically optimized for, but rather a de facto adversarial example - the particular model of accident was chosen because people observed that this type of accident seems to cause a lot of injuries, i.e. that this test intentionally targeted a specific known weakness of the current cars; so it's no wonder that the initial test results confirmed that. If the average car would already (pre-modifications) do well in driver-side small overlap situations, then this type of crash would simply not get chosen for extra testing.

dang 5y ago

Discussed at the time: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23689538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23689538 - June 2020 (343 comments)

malf 5y ago

Do we then need to discount for “the particular failure modes of the most popular models are more likely to appear in the overall accident stats, and thus more likely to be used for the next set of test protocols”? :)

yk 5y ago

Over fitting to crash test benchmarks is a kinda obvious problem. From an engineering perspective one needs to have a good idea how a crash looks like to be able to optimize safe vehicles. The two options are, to write the standard oneself, that is a lot of hard work, or to go to the crash test standards, who hopefully did precisely that hard work, and optimize for the standard crashes.

mrslave 5y ago

Goodhart's law: Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.