www.youtube.com/watch?v=&hl=en
One of the most talked about displays at last week's New York International Auto Show was a crumpled Ford Taurus. Ford wanted to show visitors how well the car withstands a collision.
This is relatively new terrain for automakers, which historically–and religiously–avoid any suggestion that automobiles actually collide, that you might lose your life in one of their products. Safety features are most often promoted by showing how the vehicle miraculously avoids trouble: the SUV that swerves to avert a child darting into the street, the family sedan that abruptly stops on slick pavement, inches short of a fender bender with a car that had mistakenly nosed into an intersection and so forth.
Automobile safety has always been hard to explain, difficult to sell. And car makers have allowed unspoken white lies about safety to move their product. Drivers who ride high in a vehicle, for example, report feeling safer because they can see out over traffic. Yet a vehicle with a high center of gravity is more likely to roll. Large and heavy cars cocoon passengers in copious steel, protecting them in the event of a collision. Yet large and heavy vehicles are more likely to lose traction (and are very difficult to regain control of once they skid or spin). They're more likely to be involved in an accident in the first place.
There are signs that this conventional wisdom is changing. Volkswagen ran a memorable, if controversial, campaign for its 2007 Jetta and Passat called, "Safe Happens." Commercials showed passengers riding along casually and nonchalantly before a violent crash. The passengers emerge unharmed and the vehicle is mostly intact. Viewers hated the commercials for dramatizing the fears that lurk with anyone who straps on a safety belt in an automobile. But the ads raised consumer interest in Volkswagen.
SmartCar realized that safety was a crucial consideration for its debut. Engineers at the company are justifiably proud of the canny ways the car protects its occupants. They put videos of the crash tests on the Internet even before the ForTwo went on sale in the United States. At any press event, they have crumpled, rolled and battered vehicles on display.
So now Ford is scaring the daylights out of drivers as a sales tactic. As insidious as it seems, it's actually a breath of fresh air.
