Aug 31, 2006 0
The crash test guide to buying a car
A car collision is never pure entertainment. Still, the sense of excitment continued right up to the actual moment the SUV slammed into the side of the convertible like a RPG. Nobody would be walking away from this accident. As the vehicles rolled forward, in the convertible’s driving seat slumped a lifeless figure. But that is only to be expected with a crash-test dummy in Volvo’s traffic accident lab. In fact, if this had been a real driver whose door had been rammed at 50kph by an SUV he could have expected nothing worse than a broken rib – which is in itself a demonstration of the value of this kind of research.
“We are in that way very boring - dreadfully boring,” says Volvo’s Lennart Stroem about the obsessive mindset behind this painstaking recreation of an everyday prang. And, without question, his company car safety centre in Goteborg in the north of Sweden is a temple to a distinctly Scandinavian approach to both life and motoring. Each year, 450 cars come here to die – launched into the air or hurtled along cables into other vehicles at all conceivable angles and straight into a menacing black 850-tonne steel obelisk.
To reconstruct any conceivable shunt, the lab has two long corridors down which it rifles vehicles to a stomach-lurching impact on a section of glass flooring over a ring of cameras and lights. Peering down from the observation platform, the audience of hacks and Japanese dignitaries are momentarily startled into silence. Then, a team of technicians in bright red overalls scuttle out to fiddle with the wires stuck over the crumpled convertible like electrodes on a heart patient.
To boost all this data with real-world evidence, Volvo also gathers information from crashes on local roads - 35,000 incidents to date, each coded with 200 parameters. “We are in a society which takes care of us,” says Stroem. “This is also related to traffic safety. We have the same number of road deaths we had in the forties when there were no cars.” Yet out of Goteborg pours a stream of innovations now found in cars on every corner of the globe - even on the wild-eyed, nerve-jangling highways of Goteburg’s cultural nemesis of Dubai.
Among Volvo’s bright ideas are three-point safety belts, laminated glass, crumple zones, airbags and side impact protection systems - as well as a slew of more sophisticated devices still restricted to the luxury end of the automobile market. But today the sheer ubiquity of these features could well be why, even in an accident hotspot like Dubai, few non-Swedish drivers might weigh up a model’s specific safety qualities when looking for a new car (which could partly explain the UAE’s hunger for truck-based SUVs).
Of course, few who have witnessed the explosive impact of a XC90 on a C70 under the dazzling halogen lamps are likely to pick alloy wheels over added protection. But how can the average punter make full use of the sophisticated investigations of labs like Volvo’s? One thing anyone looking for a new motor can be guaranteed - whichever model or make he looks at - is a salesman who can reel off an impressive list of acronyms and figures.
In fact, Jan Ivarsson, a manager at Volvo’s Traffic Accident Research Team, claims a spot of research is enough to make an informed choice - and there are indeed significant differences that could well save you and your family from injury. “Every car manufacturer claims to have SIPS,” he says. “But if you are educated you can take knowledge from independent research.”
Among the international organisations Ivarsson recommends are the United States’ Highway Institute, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Consumer Reports. In Europe there is also EuroNCAP - the European New Car Assessment Programme.
However, in the UAE an additional check may be necessary. As safety regulations here are laxer than in the West, cars in UAE showroom may not only be cheaper than the same models elsewhere but a heck of a lot riskier. “Despite the high risk of collision in the UAE some manufacturers strip vehicles of their safety features to reduce the price,” said one motor-trade executive. “I can think of one vehicle with three sets of seats where there is no laminated glass on the back windows, which is precisely where children are likely to be sitting,” he says.
Other industry figures provide examples of missing airbags and reduced impact protection. So, especially if you are after a cheaper set of wheels, check its safety features have indeed been fitted. In any case, on the UAE’s roads it pays to let crash-test dummies rather than your family discover your vehicle’s weak points.
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