What is the safest vehicle as far as a full frontal or side impact goes. I’m guessing some huge ass SUV or truck but lets keep this reasonable aka only vehicles normal people drive no garbage trucks or tanks! I’m guessing some Volvo SUV or something but im probably wrong. So whats the safest as far as surviving an impact with minimal injuries?
A side question: How safe are hummers h1, h2?
The safests vehicles are French (Renault, Peugeot, etc.). Volvos and Saabs come close to that.
A huge truck is safe if you crash it against a passenger car, but it is suicide crashing against an immovable object. Trucks have little or no crumple zones to protect the occupants.
Try this site.
According to a recent ad by Ford, their new Town Car is the first in the auto industry to get 5 stars in all 5 categories. There must be more or else they would have said it is the only car to get all 5 stars.
Hmm. Safety-wise, I’d take ANY racecar fitted with a full 'cage and five point harness over any tin-can with gut-twister belts. You can get an old Improved Touring (ITA, ITB, ITC) or Showroom Stock (SSA <obsolete class>, SSB, SSC) road racer, Prepared (AP, BP, CP, DP, EP, FP) autocrosser, or an old circle-track car for a lot less than any SUV. Add 100 bucks for an open-faced helmet and you’d be a lot safer in a wreck than anyone in a normal car or truck.
You’d be surprised at how little is actually structural in any modern car or truck. There’s a lot of sheetmetal that isn’t stressed or is very lightly stressed, there’s a lot of just plain space between walls without even a supporting web to reduce buckling, there’s a lot of unstressed plastic, and the doors on most cars have very little metal now that we’ve required so many damn airbags that we don’t actually protect against structural collapse and intrusion.
If you want to improve the safety of your car in a side impact, you could take the window winding mechanisms out (this may require permanent Lexan windows to be fitted), seal off the lock mechanisms, seal all the holes but one in the doors, and fill them with expandable foam. That alone would improve the side impact safety of any old (pre-side airbag) car by a very considerable extent.
Anyway, I’d rather dodge the accident than walk away from it - I think that an old Honda CRX is the one for you. Get a rust-free one, some better-than-junk tires (IM or email me to find out my recommendations) and a decent helmet and you’ll be just fine.
LOL sorry I’m not actually looking for a new car, and face it an old Honda CRX will be torn to pieces if say a Navigator hits it head-on, just cause the honda is so low to the ground
Although as a side-note a girl I knew god it in a really bad wreck in an older Honda Civic, the tire came completely off the car somehow, it forced her car into the oncoming lane and some explorer I think hit her. Her car was ruined but still upright and it knocked the suv on its side which would seem odd but I guess because of the higher center of gravity of suv’s it is not too surprising…The girl broke bones in her legs and fractured some ribs I believe. 
got*in a really bad wreck I should say
Well, there’s a good chance that if the Navigator is gonna hit side-on that it’ll just ride clear over the hood and never get to the passenger cabin at all. A full head on crash with a Navigator would be bad - but as that is the worst-case scenario, anything that happens when you dodge him will be better, including going into the ditch.
'Cages help. They help a lot. All of a sudden, the only problem with rolling over is the dent in and scratched paint on the roof panel. They also add a lot of structural strength and rigidity in just the right place to help with impact protection.
The problem here is that “crash safety” is one a small component to being in a safe car. Small cars typically get better crash ratings than SUVs (and SUVs tend to do better than Trucks) because of the weight advantage (lighter car = less impact energy). A SUV crashing into a tree (or head on to a guard rail) is the biggest killer, NOT being hit head on by another car.
Head on crashes, regardless of what you hear in the news, are rare. Most crashes happen either in intersections or rear end crashes. Doors of both SUVs and cars are generally not all that different so cabin protection is similar in either. You can add that because of the height advantage, side impacts are also more likely to hit under the door, adding driver protection in a SUV.
Rear end protection is like wise similar (although SUVs of course, being longer, are safer for the front passengers).
The real danger (and a big killer) is roll overs. SUVs, because of height and suspension systems, can roll on a dime. A side impact isn’t likely to kill you, flipping over at 45 mph uncontrolled probably will.
SUVs are not allowed to run auto-cross (a type of safey cone “race” in a parking lot) because they can tip at extremely low speeds.
I’m gonna expand a little bit on the autocross part - apologies for being off topic. Autox is the second-cheapest form of motorsport, the cheapest being karting. A local sports-car club finds a big, flat, clear lot, and sets up a course that typically has between 10 and 40 turns on it in about 1/2 mile of racing. Cars run one at a time, against the clock, and are divided into a couple dozen classes based on predicted performance. Almost anything on decent tires can be locally competitive in a stock or street-touring class - I once won a trophy for being second in class in a Subaru Legacy wagon. Driving skill counts more than budget here (although if you’re looking for national-level wins, you’d better have both), and as a consequence there are usually a lot more cars at an autocross than you’d ever expect. Almost every event I’ve been to was filled to capacity and then some - the pavement’s so difficult to find that when an event is actually held, we don’t get as many runs as you’d expect (sometimes as few as 3!) due to there being 200 cars there.
Drifting even more off topic, does anyone know of a freakin’ huge lot (at least 100 yards by 200 yards) in the Northeast Ohio area whose owners would be willing to let 200 potential customers for your business (plus whoever shows up to watch) take up your lot for some spring, summer and fall Saturdays and Sundays?
Why does safety have to assume you’ll get in the accident in the first place? Things like ABS, traction control, lots of horsepower all contribute to safety factors as well. Don’t forget quantity and location of airbags (well, that’s reflected in the crash tests).
As for side impact, you definitely want to be broadsided by something with a similar bumper height. If there’s no impact on the rocker panel, you lose a lot of protection.
Don’t pretend that lighter cars don’t roll. I’ve seen coverage in a motorsports forum of a guy who rolled his FORD FOCUS during an auto-cross event. He did have tires a lot more grippy than the OEM ones, though.
By the way, if you’re talking passenger car safety, I’d nominate the Lincoln Town Car/ Mercurty Grand Marquis / Ford Crown Vic. They’re heavy (4300 lbs), still handle like cars, and… 5 star safety rating. Just don’t get rear-ended by persons travelling over 70 MPH, or you’ll do your marshmallow impression.
This site has different ratings.
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/testing/ncap/
One of the neat things there is they can tell you how many ft-lbs of force and /or Gs you’ll experience in different simulated scenarios.
Geez, what did he do to roll a Focus? Was he running national-level H-stock with Hoosiers or Kumho 710s and went fast enough through a slalom that he put it on his roof?
Anyways, I still support the idea of a racecar being significantly safer than any stock car. They’re supposed to be, and I’ve seen many a race car crash where the driver would’ve met St. Peter had he been in a road car.
Actually, the component or control system that contributes the most to active safety is the nut behind the wheel, followed closely by the general design premise of the car. You can make maneuvers in an old Lotus Elan on new tires that would have any modern car with any system they cared to equip it with through a barricade.
Safe for you and those in your car/truck/suv or safe for the car/truck/suv/pedestrain/house/train/boat that might be involved in a colision w/ you?
That’s not true. More weight=bigger crumple zones=better safety. The problem with most trucks and some SUVs is that the additional weight is not used in those crumple zones.
Race cars and F1 cars have a different philosophy. There are not many crumple zones, but the passenger cabin is as rigid as possible. This requires the use of 5-point safety belts and bucket seats, which would not be practical for everyday use.
I don’t know about five-point harnesses and bucket seats being unpractical for daily use - I can get into a harness in 30 seconds (and out in .1) if I’m not the last person to have used the belts and in about 5 seconds if I was. The deep bucket seats are more comfortable than any standard ones anyway.
What I understand is that since many SUV’s and all trucks are built on frames instead of uni-body. The frame, being less likely to ‘crumple’ and absorb the impact. Moot point as far as I’m concerned. Pick what you need, then look to safety, MPG, whatever.
I wasn’t asking really about racecars but stuff that are “road vehicles” and most people don’t have harnesses and such.
Well, if you want a vehicle in which you’d be able to walk or even drive away from a big wreck, you’re pretty much stuck with some sort of racecar.
Harnesses are $70 on www.racerwholesale.com . They help you control the car during hard cornering and provide much better protection than that rip-your-abdomen-in-two belt in a standard car.