smart splat

For all those greenies who think smaller, lighter cars are the wave of the future, you might want to update your grasp of physics:

The tests involved head-on crashes between the fortwo and a 2009 Mercedes C Class, the Fit and a 2009 Honda Accord and the Yaris and the 2009 Toyota Camry. The tests were conducted at 40 miles per hour, representing a severe crash.

In the fortwo collision, the institute said the Smart, which weighs 1,808 lbs, went airborne and turned around 450 degrees after striking the C Class, which weighs nearly twice as much. There was extensive damage to the fortwo’s interior and the Smart driver could have faced extensive injuries to the head and legs. There was little damage to the front seat area of the C Class.

In the words of Better Half, “‘Airborne’ seems bad.”
I am, however, quite amused at the reactions of the represenatives from those companies that produce wee little cars like the Smart ForTwo – not only do these tests emulate something that supposedly almost never happens, but they are also somehow indicative of a biased agenda against smaller cars.
To take those allegations in turn, the 16,000,000+ hits for a Google search of “head on accident” seem to indicate that these kinds of things happen a fair bit more than Mr. Schembri, the president of SmartUSA, might be willing to admit. Unfortunately, orientation-at-impact does not appear to be a statistic that is tracked, so I cannot come up with exact numbers, but suffice to say that these types of accidents are not impossible. Hell, if nothing else, there are approximately 1.5 million car accidents with deer in the United States every year, with about 150 fatalities and over 100,000 injuries – how do you think a ForTwo will fare against one of those at 40 MPH?
Regarding the second allegation, the tests were run by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an organization that would extract no benefit or advantage by unfairly or inaccurately portraying vehicles of a certain type.
However, none of this really matters… all that really matters can be summed up in one word: physics. Typically, all other things being equal, the massier of two objects tends to win arguments. Period. On the highway, you can see examples of this proposition every day, in that the larger of vehicles involved in accidents tends to come out significantly less damaged than the smaller. Of course, Mr. Schembri has a response to that, saying that if we took that kind of thinking to the extreme, we would all be driving around in semis. He is right – that is extreme. Likewise, for some people, it is extreme to sacrifice a significant degree of safety for a somewhat smaller degree of gas efficiency – for example, my Mazda 3 weighs a little less than twice that of a ForTwo, but gets nearly 3/4s a ForTwo’s gas mileage (which, granted, is well above its EPA-indicated mileage, but I can provide records proving my claim), and I would be far more willing to bet my life on it, than a ForTwo.
If a ForTwo works for you, fine. But do not, for a second, think that just because you start driving one around, other people will stop driving cars that could potentially destroy your cute little econobox without even a second’s hesitation. Furthermore, if that hypothetical situation is, indeed, possible (which it obviously is), people should be made aware, as not publicizing it could give people a horribly misplaced sense of safety in a vehicle that may pass the required tests, but is still one of the smallest cars on the road, and should be treated by its drivers as such.
Mass wins, folks, and when another car has more inertia than yours, guess what?