Crash tests show gasoline savings can risk safety

Buyers choosing the smallest cars for low price and high gas mileage could be endangering themselves and their passengers, says a major auto-safety researcher.

In new crash tests, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety rammed three automakers’ smallest cars into their midsize models. Although the small cars had passed other IIHS tests, they flunked in collisions with larger but still-fuel-efficient sedans. “The safety trade-offs are clear,” IIHS President Adrian Lund says. “There are healthier ways to save gas.”

IIHS, funded by auto insurers, usually crashes cars into stationary barriers at 40 miles per hour. This time, it was car into car, each going 40 mph.

Barrier tests, in effect, show how a car holds up crashing into one like itself, Lund says. These tests show colliding with a larger car at the same effective speed as the barrier test.

IIHS picked three small cars that got its top rating of “good” in barrier tests. In these tests, they fell to “poor” The report comes as small cars take a larger share of U.S. new-vehicle sales. While R.L. Polk registrations show 13.8% of vehicles on the road are classed “small cars,” their share of new-car sales rose from 14.5% in 2006 to 18.1% last year, says Autodata.

“We’re hearing people say, ‘Everything gets a ‘good’ rating now, so I might as well buy a small car,’ ” Lund says. “A lot of people are forgetting that the laws of physics still hold” and even a little bit bigger still is safer.

USA Today