Only 1 of 11 small cars passes IIHS crash test

NYSpeed Automotive
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The smallest cars on the road carry the biggest injury risk in a common and deadly type of crash, a new report being released today reveals.

Only one of 11 small city and minicars passed the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s small front overlap crash test in which a car hits a barrier with the front driver’s side corner at 40 miles per hour. It simulates clipping another car head-on or hitting a tree or pole.

The worst performer was the Honda Fit, which earned a “poor” rating in the test along with five other models and all but one of the rest were “marginal.”

Just one car among the 2013 and 2014 models tested received an “acceptable” rating in the tough test – the Chevrolet Spark. Thus, Spark is the only one in the group to earn the IIHS Top Safety Pick designation.

“We’re geeked,” says Chevrolet spokeswoman Annalisa Bluhm about the passing grade. She says improvements were made when the car was introduced into the U.S.but no modifications were added to pass the specific test. The car is a global product that was developed by General Motors’ GM Korea unit.

The group performed worse than any other car category on the test, which was instituted in 2012. None received the highest rating of “good.”

“Small, lightweight vehicles have an inherent safety disadvantage,” Joe Nolan, a senior vice president for the institute, the safety arm of the insurance industry, says in a statement.

But spokesman Russ Rader says there is no reason they can’t be re-engineered to perform well in the tests. Often, he says the problem is that the main shock-absorbing materials are bypassed or missed when an offset crash test is conducted. And he noted that while larger cars have generally performed better, automakers are working “feverishly to update their product to do better in this test.”

Though the Fit finished last, Honda has improved crash performance in new versions of its other models, says Rader.

Honda just unveiled a redesigned 2015 Fit for the U.S. last week at the auto show in Detroit and in a statement predicted that the 2015 Fit will earn the highest rating in all IIHS tests, including the small overlap.

Besides Fit, also rated “poor” (from lowest to highest score) was Fiat 500, Hyundai Accent, Toyota Prius C, Nissan Versa and Mitsubishi Mirage.

Rated "marginal, " were Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris, Kia Rio and Mazda2.

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Read basically the same article on CNN this morning, except they added something I’ve been talking about with these micro cars for a while…

Frontal crash tests like these only indicate how a car will perform in a crash with a similarly-sized vehicle. In real life, however, cars this size are much more likely to hit a larger vehicle, the Institute pointed out. Insurance Institute crash tests have indicated that, in crashes between larger and smaller vehicles, occupants in the smaller vehicle will suffer significantly greater injuries.
“These cars have an inherent safety disadvantage in many kinds of crashes,” Insurance Institute spokesman Russ Rader said.

This is something I’ve always felt was REALLY misleading for the general public with how our current crash test rankings work. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had small car owners tell me their car was just as safe as my SUV because of it’s “4 star crash test rating”. They don’t understand that when they crash into something larger, which is almost every other car on the road, those 4 stars go to 1 star because of simple physics. Then I show them the Smart Car vs big Mercedes video on youtube.

A much more fair system would be to do the test simulating hitting another vehicle that represents the average sized passenger vehicle on the road.

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I don’t think this is any mystery. Small cars have less “car” between the driver and the rest of the world.

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I guess you’ve never talked to many non-car people small car owners then. I had one go on and on about how his wife’s smart car was SAFER than my old Expedition because it got more stars.

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Oh I have. The stupid “but it’s shaped like an egg” argument.

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It’s good to see that daewoo makes safe cars over there in Korea and India

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I’ve run into a lot of people like that as well. Always a facepalm moment.

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I fail to see how this is similar to a comparison with a collision with a larger vehicle. From my understanding they are driving a small car into an immovable barrier (like a tree etc). I would rather hit a larger vehicle with built in crumple zones in my small car than a steel reinforced wall.

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The difference is in an immovable barrier test there is only force at play, the energy of the small car. F=MA (force = mass x acceleration). The acceleration is a constant in the test for all vehicles so a small car has far less force to deal with than a large car. It’s a great test if you plan on crashing into a tree or highway divider.

The problem with this is most serious accidents are vehicle on vehicle. Now you’re dealing with two difference forces, the energy of vehicle A and the energy of vehicle B. If A is a 2300lb Chevy Spark going 35mph and B is a 4200lb Ford Edge going 35mph you’re talking about two greatly different forces of impact. The Spark is going to absorb all it’s energy and a large amount of the the Edge’s energy as well as it is violently thrown backwards. The Edge on the other hand is going to continue in it’s current direction while maintaining some of the energy it had.

This site has a really crude animation of it, just make sure to set the speeds to a positive on one side and negative on the other (like 6 and -6) and change the bumpers to “normal”.

Here’s a question. Which is a worse impact, a 3000lb car hitting an immovable object like a giant boulder at 35mph or two 3000lb cars travelling at 35 mph in opposite directions colliding head on?

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I love pulling up behind smart cars at red lights in the Ford. :smiley:

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I thought the smart car did alright in crash tests? I remember seeing a video years back of a smart car hitting a cement wall at 75mph and the doors still opened lol. Impact shock would of killed you, but it held up.

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Josh, checkmate.

The government really needs to update these crash tests to simulate the vehicle hitting another vehicle that is the average weight of passenger vehicles on US roads in the current year so people stop having this false sense of security in their “4 star rated” micro-car.

They won’t though because less people would buy small cars and that’s the opposite of what the government wants.

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I’m talking about comparing it to other small cars.

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I should’ve leased a spark… Better crash rating.

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But it’s just common sense that you’re safer in an Expedition than you are in a Smart car. If you think otherwise just because of the number of stars on the window sticker, you probably shouldn’t be driving in the first place.

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That overlap test was introduced in 2012 so it’s no surprise that none of those vehicles passed since they weren’t designed for it. The bad PR will lead to some modifications but every OEM now includes this test to design future product.

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What the government should do is ban all larger gas sucking vehicles and only allow us to drive small better MPG cars.
Whiletheyre at it they should ban all large trees and telephone poles!

The problem is the owner of this “gas guzzling POS”!!!

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Mine doesn’t guzzle any gas. If you are not brainwashed by the biggest scam artist in human history (Al Gore) you are mindless? Ha!

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I own the same model fit, looks like I am dooooooomed

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I’m really disappointed the truck guy didn’t give the fat prius bitch a big black smokey rev at some point.

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that lady needs to eat more fried chicken to speed up her departure from this planet