Crash: Not the Movie

In the competitive world of automotive advertising, safety seems to be a concern to most Western drivers. In the United States, we have been hammered by safety statistics for decades; some us remember the automotive safety efforts here in the United States pioneered by consumer advocate, Ralph Nader starting in the 1960s. There are now U.S. government and international safety standards alive and well in most Western countries and Japan, still woefully lacking in developing nations. While those of us in richer nations want safe cars, those in emerging nations just want cars.

With a little British spelling, here’s a great summary of current safety standards: “Since … campaigners like Ralph Nader began highlighting the need for stronger industry regulation to protect consumers, cars in the industrialised West have gradually become safer for occupants. This has been the result of a combination of safety technologies promoting ‘passive’ crash protection (e.g. crumple zones, seat belts, air bags) and ‘active’ crash avoidance systems (e.g. electronic stability control).These improvements have contributing significantly to reductions in road fatalities. For example in the United States the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that safety technologies saved 328,550 lives between 1960 and 2002…

“An … innovative and market-based approach to vehicle safety is consumer information provided by New Car Assessment Programmes (NCAPs)… The traditional car producing territories (US, Japan, EU, Australia) all have independent NCAPs which test and publish consumer star rating information for popular models of car. These NCAPs have proved very effective and innovative in creating a market for safety, encouraging car purchasers to choose safer products, and car manufacturers to provide them. The resulting improvements in vehicle crashworthiness and occupant protection have been a major contributor to fatality reductions in the industrialised countries over the last twenty years. For example, research for the Swedish Government into the impact of the European New Car Assessment Programme found that there is a 12% reduction in risk of serious injury for every Euro NCAP star achieved (maximum five stars). A 5 star Euro NCAP car has been estimated to have a 36% lower fatality risk than a car that passes the minimum front and side impact international standards of the UN World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations… Yet many cars produced in newly motorising countries do not yet even meet these UN standards.” RoadSafetyFund.org.

But safety costs money, and in the developing world, consciousness is more focused on mileage, functionality and status rather than safety. In Latin America and South Asia, for example, the majority of cars have a one star safety rating. Safety has not yet embedded itself into the culture, and the affordability of cars is a relatively nascent phenomenon for many of the emerging markets.

But here in the United States, sometimes the safety ratings can be misleading, and much of that misdirection comes from the pre-2011 assumptions inherent in the crash test dummies used to generate the ratings by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: “Starting with 2011 models, the federal government replaced an average-size male dummy with a smaller female dummy for some tests. When[, for example,] the 2011 [Toyota] Sienna [mini-van] was slammed into a barrier at 35 mph, the female dummy in the front passenger seat registered a 20 to 40 percent risk of being killed or seriously injured, according to the test data. The average for that class of vehicle is 15 percent.” Washington Post, March 25th. But these tests weren’t applied before 2010, and they aren’t always applied to new cars either. The star-rating system only deploys a male dummy in the passenger seat.

“Consumer advocates say the female dummy’s subpar performance in some top-selling vehicles reveals a need to better study women and smaller people in collisions. Until recently, only male dummies were used during more than three decades of government testing aimed at helping car buyers choose between vehicles. The female dummy also mimics a 12-year-old child…In general, experts say, the smaller the person, the fewer crash forces the body can tolerate. When cars wrap around trees or utility poles, for example, smaller drivers and passengers suffer more head, abdominal and pelvic injuries but fewer chest injuries than average-size people, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Women’s less-muscular necks also make them more susceptible to whiplash, researchers say.

“A 2011 study by the University of Virginia’s Center for Applied Biomechanics found that seat-belted female drivers in actual crashes had a 47 percent higher chance of serious injuries than belted male drivers in comparable collisions. For moderate injuries, that difference rose to 71 percent… The average American man is 5-feet-9 and 195 pounds, and the average American woman is 5-feet-4 and 165 pounds, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics.” The Post. Differences clearly exist for folks of differing sizes, from large and perhaps obese drivers and passengers to the petite.

Our driving habits differ as well: “Government data from police-reported crashes also show women are at greater risk of being hurt, particularly when they’re not behind the wheel. In the driver’s seat, men outnumber women by a ratio of 3 to 1 in vehicle fatalities. Men also drive 50 percent more than women — an average additional 5,000 miles annually… While females comprise one-quarter of all driver fatalities, they make up half of all passengers killed, according to NHTSA. Because they’re on the road less, women are killed and injured at disproportionately higher rates than males, experts say.” The Post. Companies are reacting, and many have been doing their own differentiating tests for years, but effectively, the safety ratings are beginning to change to reflect the new measurements. Lower ratings today on a vehicle that had better ratings in prior years do not mean the car is less safe – just that the new standards are a lot tougher. For car buyers, particularly in the used car market, this is just a reminder to look behind the safety ratings to see how they might apply to your body physique.

I’m Peter Dekom, and looking behind the statistics usually is more valuable than simply assuming they are accurate in all circumstances.