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How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

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Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#41

Post by hyperpape »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #25
laegooose wrote: post #5

The whole car safety topic is very confusing. Car accidents is top1-top2 death reason in US for people in 20-40 age group [1]. Probably less in Europe but still one of the leading ones. I was thinking about how I can make myself safer. Which car brand/model is better? Which seat is better for passenger? How much riskier it is to drive during the night? In the rain? How dangerous is it to overtake on road with 1 lane…

Driving is already incredibly safe. Yes, it's the leading cause of death in those age categories, but there are 3-4 trillion miles driven each year in the USA. That comes out to 1 death every 100 million miles.

I'm not sure that this is a helpful way to look at things. Cars are much safer than they could be and the risk per mile is low, but driving is still one of our big sources of risk, precisely because we do it so much.

Similarly, I estimate ~2 deaths per million cigarettes smoked (~1000 cigarettes/year/person >= age 15, 480k deaths/year), and while driving a hundred miles in a day is unremarkable, smoking 100 cigarettes in a day is pretty astonishing, but I wouldn't say that cigarettes are not that risky. The total deaths per capita are high.

(To be clear: cigarettes are more dangerous than driving any way you measure it. I'm just showing that you get to weird places if you look at risk/unit, without looking at total volume).

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#42

Post by ghaff »

laegooose wrote: post #5

The whole car safety topic is very confusing. Car accidents is top1-top2 death reason in US for people in 20-40 age group [1]. Probably less in Europe but still one of the leading ones. I was thinking about how I can make myself safer. Which car brand/model is better? Which seat is better for passenger? How much riskier it is to drive during the night? In the rain? How dangerous is it to overtake on road with 1 lane…

Speaking purely from personal experience.

Driving while impaired in some way certainly is more dangerous. (Drugs and alcohol but also just fatigue.) Driving too fast for conditions. Bad weather, especially snow. I'd say in general that highway driving was probably safer than secondary roads--again assuming not excess speed.

One of the things I like about greater work flexibility these days is that I rarely have to drive in snow. I just stay home.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#43

Post by shoes_for_thee »

baxtr wrote: post #28
bcrosby95 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving is already incredibly safe. Yes, it's the leading cause of death in those age categories, but there are 3-4 trillion miles driven each year in the USA. That comes out to 1 death every 100 million miles.

I wonder what happens if you compare driving to other activities, by stretching them out to the 3-4 trillion miles - but in time and then compare death rates. E.g. taking swimming 2hrs per day (maybe equivalent to the 2-3 hrs spent in cars daily). Higher or lower death rates?

This might have some useful info for you... https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1026.html

death rates per million hours of activity

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#44

Post by netman21 »

When I designed car seats we optimized them for the federal tests. The biggest load on a seat back was represented by a large 95% man leaning back to get at his wallet. We were ready for production when the car had it's first sled test. Basically mimic what happens to the occupants when hitting a solid barrier at 30 MPH. The front seat occupants flew forward, bounced back, and completely broke the seat backs, crushing the legs of the rear occupants.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#45

Post by globular-toast »

ambicapter wrote: post #40
globular-toast wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably downvoted because people don't like it. But it's the truth.

> A 2700lb subcompact vehicle that scores Good may fare worse than a 5000lb SUV that scores Acceptable. This is because the small overlap tests involve driving the vehicle into a fixed obstacle, as opposed to a reference vehicle or vehicle-like obstacle of a specific weight. This is, in some sense, equivalent to crashing the vehicle into a vehicle of the same weight, so it's as if the 2700lb subcompact was tested by…

No.. that still shows it's the truth.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#46

Post by mohaine »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #25
laegooose wrote: post #5

The whole car safety topic is very confusing. Car accidents is top1-top2 death reason in US for people in 20-40 age group [1]. Probably less in Europe but still one of the leading ones. I was thinking about how I can make myself safer. Which car brand/model is better? Which seat is better for passenger? How much riskier it is to drive during the night? In the rain? How dangerous is it to overtake on road with 1 lane…

Driving is already incredibly safe. Yes, it's the leading cause of death in those age categories, but there are 3-4 trillion miles driven each year in the USA. That comes out to 1 death every 100 million miles.

This. If driving was the only cause of death, and we did nothing but drive from birth we would expect to live to ~250 years old on average.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#47

Post by crottypeter »

andrewzah wrote: post #8
amelius wrote: post #7

How about F1 cars?

Has there ever been a full or partial head-on collision with an f1 car?

Yes, in Abu Dhabi in 2010, Michael Schumacher spun 180 and Vitantonio Liuzzi then hit him head on.

It was at relatively low speed (for F1) but Schumacher's head was very nearly hit as the other car rode over his.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#48

Post by nradov »

nostrademons wrote: post #29
nradov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most relevant research on car brands and models is probably the IIHS driver death rate data. It's not perfect since the populations are self selecting (cars aren't assigned to drivers at random) but within a particular vehicle class if you see a huge difference in death rates then that's probably meaningful. https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

An interesting instance of the self-selection problem seems to show up if you select small 4-door 2017 cars. The Nissan Juke 2WD has a death rate of 12; the 4WD version of the same car has a death rate of 65. I have trouble believing that there's a significant difference in the cars themselves, so it seems likely that people who would buy a 2WD small SUV are a significantly different demographic than those who would…

The same discrepancy appears in the 2014 data as well so it's probably not a statistical fluke. Maybe there's a real design flaw in the Juke 4WD model?

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#49

Post by kube-system »

DavidPeiffer wrote: post #31

Does anyone know of a way to objectively compare safety ratings between different eras of cars? The standards for safety ratings change periodically, and great strides have been made in safety. I'm curious how much risk I'd remove by upgrading from a 2010 to a 2015 or 2018. Driver death data [1] mentioned below may be the best source, just curious if there are any others. Also, [2] is a really interesting crash test…

Cars from 2010-2018 would have been subject to many of the same tests anyway that could be compared directly. Just don't compare aggregates based on tests that only the later models were subject to.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#50

Post by tomohawk »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #25
laegooose wrote: post #5

The whole car safety topic is very confusing. Car accidents is top1-top2 death reason in US for people in 20-40 age group [1]. Probably less in Europe but still one of the leading ones. I was thinking about how I can make myself safer. Which car brand/model is better? Which seat is better for passenger? How much riskier it is to drive during the night? In the rain? How dangerous is it to overtake on road with 1 lane…

Driving is already incredibly safe. Yes, it's the leading cause of death in those age categories, but there are 3-4 trillion miles driven each year in the USA. That comes out to 1 death every 100 million miles.

And 28% of those deaths were alcohol related.

And a further 16% of those deaths were related to the use of other drugs such as marijuana.

https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa...

And those are just the drugs/alcohol related deaths related to driving.

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