 News Release |
The Institute evaluates the crashworthiness of passenger vehicles based
on 40 mph frontal offset tests in which the driver side of the front of
a vehicle strikes a deformable barrier. Institute researchers evaluate
the crash test performance of each vehicle and assign comparative ratings
of good, acceptable, marginal, or poor. More than 200 car, SUV, and pickup
truck designs have been rated.
When the Institute began evaluating frontal crashworthiness by vehicle
group, beginning in the mid-1990s, about half of the 80 vehicles that
were tested earned marginal or poor ratings. More were rated poor than
good.
Then manufacturers responded by changing the designs of their vehicles
to improve frontal crashworthiness. The result has been a turnaround in
the frontal ratings. Eighty-eight of the 106 current passenger vehicle
designs the Institute has evaluated earn good ratings. None is poor, and
only 2 of the 106 current designs are rated marginal.
"This program has been a huge success," says Institute president
Adrian Lund, "and because of this success frontal offset tests no
longer are providing consumers with much useful information to differentiate
among vehicles' frontal crashworthiness. We've reached the
point where we can declare victory and move on."
Details of test verification: Moving on doesn't
mean abandoning frontal offset crash protection. Instead the Institute
is initiating a new approach involving evaluations based on manufacturers'
own frontal tests of vehicles meeting requirements established by the
Institute. The manufacturers are providing detailed information from their
offset tests, including video, and the Institute is assessing this information,
assigning ratings, and conducting audit tests to verify manufacturers'
results.
Only redesigned vehicles with immediate predecessors that earned the
top rating of good in previous Institute tests are eligible for verification.
Substantially redesigned vehicles with significant changes in size, weight,
or body style aren't eligible. The Institute will continue testing
these vehicles.
"The verification approach assures that automakers still pay attention
to offset crash protection as they redesign their older models and introduce
new ones. This approach is possible because of the manufacturers'
actions during the past decade. They have incorporated offset crash test
performance plus government-required and other consumer information crash
testing into their guidelines. They routinely conduct their own offset
tests during the design process," Lund points out.
Recognizing this effort, the verification approach goes a step beyond
an Institute policy in place since the beginning of the frontal test program.
Manufacturers always have been asked to confirm whether the Institute's
ratings could be carried over from one model year to the next. Based on
this information, the Institute has been carrying over ratings for vehicles
with no significant design changes.
"The manufacturers will assume a bigger role now that our frontal
test is a de facto industry standard. This is how it should work. When
most every vehicle passes the test, it's time to simply keep an
eye out to make sure manufacturers continue the good work," Lund
says. "In the meantime we'll keep the pressure on the manufacturers
to improve crashworthiness in side impacts and to design seat/head restraints
to reduce the risk of whiplash in rear crashes. We'll also look
at other areas where crashworthiness improvements still can be made."
Nine vehicles for verification: The vehicles selected
for the first round of test verification are all new or redesigned models
for the 2006 or 2007 model year. These include a midsize moderately priced
car (Toyota Camry), three large family cars (Buick Lucerne, Hyundai Azera,
and Chevrolet Impala), one small SUV (Toyota RAV4), three midsize SUVs
(Honda Pilot, Ford Explorer, and Mercedes M class), and a large pickup
truck (Dodge Ram 1500).
The manufacturers supplied information on basic vehicle and test parameters,
measurements of intrusion into the occupant compartment, injury data recorded
on a dummy representing an average-size man in the driver seat, and video
of the tests. Institute engineers reviewed this information and rated
the vehicles based on the same evaluation parameters that always have
been used. Eight of the nine vehicles earn good frontal crashworthiness
ratings. The Impala is acceptable. A major benefit of
this program is that the Institute can provide these and subsequent frontal
ratings to consumers earlier in the model year.
Audits keep manufacturers on the up and up: To ensure
manufacturers' good faith participation in the new evaluation procedures,
the Institute is conducting audit tests. Institute engineers selected
the Buick Lucerne for the first audit, and the results of this test confirm
the data supplied by the manufacturer from its own test.
The Lucerne's structure held up with little safety cage deformation
in the test. Most injury measures recorded on the driver dummy were low.
The car is rated good.
"This level of performance is the norm now," Lund notes.
How vehicles have been improved: The Institute's
test primarily assesses how well a vehicle's front-end crush zone
absorbs energy during a crash and, in turn, how well the occupant compartment,
or safety cage, holds together. If the compartment remains largely intact,
then the restraint systems can control the motion of the crash test dummy
and help keep injury measures low. But if there's significant deformation
of the safety cage and intrusion into the compartment, then the restraint
systems are less likely to keep the measures low.
Newer vehicles have much stronger occupant compartments, in large part
because of the steps automakers have taken in the past decade to earn
good ratings in the Institute's frontal tests. An example of this
improvement is the Mitsubishi Galant. When the Institute tested a 1995
model, the occupant compartment virtually collapsed. The dummy's
movement wasn't well controlled, in part because the safety cage
crumpled. The dummy moved around the left side of the inflating airbag,
and its left shoulder hit the sharp edge of the buckling window frame.
Its left knee pushed through the instrument panel and hit the steering
column's attachment hardware, gashing the dummy's vinyl "skin"
at the knee.
The dummies in tests of many other vehicles in the mid-1990s didn't
fare much better than in the Galant. But this car has been improved since
then, and so have other vehicles. The 1999 Galant's performance
represented a big improvement. There was much less deformation of the
safety cage. The rating of the structure improved to acceptable, and injury
measures weren't as high as in the 1995 test. Even more improvement
is apparent in the redesigned 2004 Galant.
"The new model shows what Mitsubishi and other manufacturers have
done to improve frontal crashworthiness," Lund says. "From
the leading edge of the 2004's front door backward, virtually no
deformation occurred in the test. The driver's survival space held
up very well, leaving room for the airbags and belts to do their jobs."
Some cars have been good performers from the beginning of the Institute's
program. Three successive designs of the Ford Taurus earned the highest
rating in the frontal test. But the rating for the recently tested Ford
Fusion isn't good. The structure of this car, a brand new design,
held up well, but the frontal evaluation is acceptable because of high
forces on the dummy's right leg.
"We think this will be rare," Lund says. "Automakers
have figured out how to design cars to protect people in frontal crashes,
and they're not likely to backslide."
Crash tests versus real-world crashes: Research shows
that drivers of vehicles that earn good ratings in frontal offset crash
tests have significantly lower risk of fatal injuries in real-world frontal
crashes, compared with drivers of vehicles with poor ratings. An Institute
study examined 14 years of federal records on crash deaths and identified
vehicles that had been rated in the Institute's offset test. Then
the researchers related the ratings to fatality risk in real-world crashes.
Controlling for differences in vehicle weight, driver age and gender,
and other factors, the researchers found that drivers of vehicles with
good ratings were about 46 percent less likely to die in frontal crashes
than drivers of the poor-rated vehicles they crashed into. Drivers of
vehicles rated acceptable or marginal were about 33 percent less likely
to die than the motorists in the poor-rated vehicles.
"To ensure that real-world risks continue to diminish, we've
got to preserve the vehicle design improvements that have been made in
response to our frontal crash test program. This is what test verification
is all about. It's about making sure manufacturers continue to design
cars that will protect their occupants in serious frontal crashes,"
Lund concludes. |
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