Stocker what you say isn't untrue, although still. Four years is a very long time in the car development industry. It was no stress at all for manufacturers to suddenly integrate iphone 5s into their head units, or install the now mandatory ESC across all models.



I would bet your left nut that the already-competent-at-mitigating-moderate-offset structural engineers at least had the plans to make their cars deal with these impacts. However, the accountants at some companies said 'no', whilst at other companies, they said 'yes'.



Off the top of my head, one in eight road deaths is a narrow overlap crash - that's a pretty significant amount of corpses annually.

 

IIHS is an insurance company lobby group, not a government agency. I give their testing 0% credibility since their entire purpose is to turn every car into a bubble mobile to limit insurance claims. They are NOT interested in your safety.

 

I don't like them, but my enemy's enemy etc







You wanna side with the accountants at hyundai or the insurance salesmen at the IIHS?

 

Electronics are all superficial to a car's design. The actual platforms are shared amongst many models generally and major sweeping revisions are very difficult to impossible. It will take a ground-up redesign to specifically deal with these issues. They can be overcome, but not within restraints of most existing platforms. Expect somewhat longer cars with the length being added between the dash and firewall. I suspect the distribution of force from a narrow offset frontal impact will need to be directed to assist in rotating the vehicle as opposed to absorbing the impact.

 

Lobbyists are scum. I would side with Jack the Ripper over a lobbyist for kittens.

 

The maxim is: "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more, no less"



What 187sks said . . . to cope with this is a major undertaking. The platform has to be totally redesigned. To change the radio and even the dash around it can be done in a month.



If you direct the forces into turning the car, you have created a few significant secondary problems: The occupants are now headed into an oncoming collision, sideways vs. impact zones heading straight into the collision. The car is now suddenly changing speeds and direction and the balance is severely upset . . . leading to a greatly increased chance of rollover. Possibly worse still, instead of just stopping dead with horrific deformation, a car is headed into same-direction traffic in adjacent lanes, sideways at a high rate of speed. This means secondary collisions of all sorts. Spinning a car may be an easy way to deal with this crash test, but for an actual crash on the highway it seems less great than just absorbing the force.



My bet is they're going to direct the force sideways into the car, which will have a MUCH stronger firewall. They may even need to do some bracing to a REAR crumple zone and have the back of the car deform while the passenger compartment is relatively untouched.

 

Have you guys heard of IIHS's new test? They're gonna drop a car on it's roof from 50 feet up. They wanna make sure cars are safe when this happens:



http://www.woodtv.com/news/local/gra...ed-parking-lot

 

What you guys say about the major reforms needed to a platform is true. Some manufacturers have at least revised their side airbag deployment programs to help - VW did this with a couple of their models. Still though, it's no major surprise and many of these vehicles being tested are actually on brand new platforms which is not very excusable for those manufacturers. Volvo, honda, and subaru had the nous to plan ahead and actually do safety research and design, and they aren't prestigious or expensive brands. So... why has everyone else lagged behind?



Interesting point about the optimum way of dealing with this type of impact. It looks like another way of dealing with it is to deflect the car sideways once they run out of crumple zone - although I am just guessing. I think in the real world there are just too many factors to predict what kind of secondary impacts will occur. I don't even know if the statistical data exists to say what has most often happened after this kind of impact.