a note to everyone who thinks bigger cars are safer
August 24th, 2006Perhaps we should define ‘safer’.
Safer for the occupants? Less likely to kill someone?.
My definition of ‘safer’ is a car that is less likely to get in an accident – some call this active (rather than passive) safety. Light cars can brake and change direction smartly, while Electronic Stability Control ensures the driver doesn’t panic and overcorrect.
As with many things in life it comes down to the relationship between stiffness and mass. You want the strongest car possible for a given weight. Adding stiffness while also adding weight is less desirable, as is losing stiffness when you subtract weight.
If you check out the crash performance of cars in offset collisions you’ll notice that it’s not the heaviest cars that protect their occupants best when striking a barrier, its the ones that have the best structural engineering, something that can’t be seen by the naked eye. Now if we’re talking two cars hitting one another, that complicates things… but that’s why I’m big on car control clinics and ESP.