We Don’t Need No Stinking Compactable Cars

Roadkill 26 Comments

It’s 1965 all over again;

In the test of the Honda Fit, for example, the steering column pushed so far into the vehicle that the dummy’s head slid off the air bag and hit the instrument panel. IIHS said the Fit was one of the worst performers in terms of potential injuries to the driver.

h/t peterj

26 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Compactable Cars”

  1. I bet every single one of them is safer than the safest car on the market 20, even 15 years ago.
    And probably as safe as the safest one of 2004.

  4. Weren’t there some guys in England that built a giant catapult that tossed cars? I’d like to see them pitch a Fit.

  5. But… but … but….a 3/4 ton pickup creates too much CO2…
    Whats a poor young mother to do… oh the humanity!

  6. I think your first link there is broken. Shouldn’t it go to a bunch of gruesome steering column impalement photos?

  7. Do you define ‘safe’ as an F-150’s front bumper hitting your clown car at face level in a T-Bone situation?

  8. Yeah, I can only imagine the look on the poor fellows face my sister in law hit when he ran a red light in front of her. He was driving a late model corvette and she was tooling along in a ’61 Belvedere. Damage to the Plymouth consisted of a small dent in the front bumper, and I do mean small. The ‘vette was literally sliced in half. Mass is a bitch.

  9. Greg G. Yes mass is a bitch. No engineering or “Crumple zones”
    will make up for the lack of mass in one of these tiny cars. They
    are absolute death traps when paired up against even a modern
    mid sized car in a crash.
    There was a woman in England driving one of those Smart Cars. She
    collided with a motorcycle. The biker was effed up, but he lived.
    The woman in the Smart Car didn’t.
    Guys, if you want to keep your kids safe, send them off to college
    in a Ford F-350 Superduty pickup truck, a full sized Hummer, a
    68 Chrysler Imperial or classic Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham.

  11. Buy yourself a subaru. All models 5 star crash rating. Plus all wheel drive which is certainly coming in handy now that we’re in this new Ice Age.

  12. Generations from now there will be no more extreme environmentalists, their lineage having been extracted from the gene pool in fatal car crashes.
    Survival of the prairie schooners.

  14. Your sister’s story is similiar to my own. I was in Victoria taxi driving an early seventies Dodge sedan, Monaco I think. The rain had just stopped and the sun came out glaring at a low angle right into my face. I had sunglasses and could see the green light in the intersection and proceeded through just as a Corvette was turning right from the cross street. I don’t think I saw him, or I couldn’t stop, but I nailed him on the driver’s side of his car about where the front tire was. After I slid sideways and stopped facing a store window the first thing I saw was a battery and a large piece of candy apple red fiberglass on the sidewalk. My elderly passenger was fine as I guess I put out my arm to keep her in her seat (no seatbelts at the time), but when I looked around I saw a Corvette in pieces. I later learned he’d just gotten it out of the shop. My taxi had a busted headlight and small dent on the bumper. Witnesses did help my case and nothing happened to me. I often wonder if that guy ever got another Corvette after that.

  17. I drive an elderly full-size Mercedes and, despite its age, it has all the modern safety features – and I drive it for a reason. My previous one was T-boned by an Audi (my son driving the Merc). The M-B drove home and the Audi had the engine in the passengers seat. Sir Isaac Newton must have worked for Mercedes…certainly not for Fiat!

  19. I shudder when I think of driving in one of the old Austins, A30 probably, from
    the early 1950s. My grandmother used to drive down with me from Ottawa to visit
    my Dad and Mom in Washington – no seatbelts, no nothing. With luck, the resistance
    to impact of an empty tin can. Fortunately my grandmother was a
    very good driver. Even better was driving up to a cottage in the same vehicle,
    but me with a birdcage on my lap. If there had been an accident, the medics
    (or undertaker) would have had an interesting time pulling birdcage and
    budgie-bits out of my liver.
    These days I am definitely of the F-150/Tacoma religion.

  21. For a picture of the BEST car in the micro-death trap category, see my blog: http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2014/01/the-phantom-is-right-listen-to-phantom.html
    Its a Chevy Spark hitting an immovable object at 40mph. The driver -might- survive, his legs -might- even still be attached when they cut him out of the stupid little golf cart.
    Sigivald please note, every single other car in the micro-clowncar segment did worse than the Chevy Spark. Most of them much worse. The Honda Fit and the FeelIt 500 pretty much disintegrated when they hit the barrier.
    Meaning ain’t none of them going to survive rear-ending my F-250, whereas I may not notice the bump when they hit. Heaven help them if they hit my ’86 F-350, that thing is HEAVY.
    Buy a BIG frickin’ car. Don’t complain about the fuel, its saving your life every single day out there.

  22. It’s Darwin at work cleaning the shallow end of the gene pool. It’s mostly Libs, Dips, and Watermelons that buy those shoebox cars. Inexperienced drivers in lightweight cars using ‘all season’ tires in the winter is an accident waiting to happen. Just sit back and let them weed themselves out of the gene pool.
    I drive a medium size diesel 4×4 truck that weighs 4300lbs, it’s built like a tank and still gets 25mpg. That’s good enough fuel economy for the safety it provides. It will long outlive any of those cheap throw-away cars.
    I should get little car shaped stickers to put on the bumper for the number of shoebox cars that have slid into my truck’s heavy steel bumpers on slick roads.

  23. All the cars will be limited to 25kmh and anything bigger than the subcompact will be banned. See, problem solved.

  24. In 20-30 years, cars will “drive themselves” and these tests won’t matter because collisions will be very rare. In 40 years, it will be against the law to take direct control of your vehicle and there will never be collisions. This triumph of technology will mean that you no longer have to imprison your child while you “drive” him/her to soccer practice where “headers” are prohibited and shin guards are kevlar and the game is played with nerf balls.
    It will be a safe world but very dull.

  25. Aside from riding an Abrams here are some things that can be done to reduce the probability of an accident. If you are short of sleep, short of caffeine or short of time you are inviting a disaster.
    One of the biggest no-nos is distracted driving. Avoid making/receiving phone calls if you are in the driver’s seat. Get bluetooth or have the passenger make/take the call or let it go to voice mail. Multi-tasking is foolish. “80% of collisions and 65% of near crashes have some form of driver inattention as contributing factors (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2010)”
    Foggy windows or icy windshields can be problematic. (80% of the information a driver gets comes through the windshield.)
    With idiots on the road, be defensive. Technology can give you ABS and airbags, it can’t fix idiot.
    Avoiding driving in Quebec is also advisable.
    And last, a BAC of zero helps.

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