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This article seems to be ultra out of date and it doesn't cite the specific crash data showing why they grouped cars the way they did.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 groupin
by 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This article seems to be ultra out of date and it doesn't cite the specific crash data showing why they grouped cars the way they did.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 agoRight 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 agoSure, there probably should be a category between 3 and 4 for Tesla: mediocre before and after. I’d prefer a car that is now safer over one that has always been mediocre, but that’s just me.
- ben7799 5y agoRight but he's punishing Tesla for scoring "Acceptable" for years on the test when they scored "Excellent" on the other tests. And he's somehow rewarding M-B and BMW when they scored "Unacceptable" or "Poor" on the same tests for years when scoring "Excellent" on the other tests. Scoring Unacceptable/Marginal/Poor on a test when scoring Excellent on others is much more evidential that the car was specifically designed only to game the test standard. It took Tesla longer to upgrade the car from "Acceptable" to "Excellent" on the new tests than it took BMW/Mercedes to upgrade their cars from "Poor" to "Excellent" on the tests, but that still means M-B and BMW put hundreds of thousands of cars with Poor crash performance on the road for years while Tesla was putting cars on the road with "Acceptable" performance in the same test. Somehow that makes Tesla worse in his rating system.
- argonaut 5y agoYou should finish reading the article, the author's reasoning for each automaker is listed at the end, and pretty much addresses your points IMO.
- gnulinux 5y agoYou didn't read the whole thing? This is explained at the end.