The Smart fortwo gets great gas mileage, fits into the tiniest parking spaces and earns style points by looking like nothing else on the road. But you can’t help but wonder how the 8-foot,
8-inch micro car will hold up on the mean streets and how occupants will fare if nailed by a Hummer.
The Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety allayed those fears today by announcing that the 2008 Smart fortwo earned top scores in its crash tests, receiving the highest rating in front-end and side-impact testing and the second-highest rating in a test of the vehicle's passenger protection in rear crashes and against whiplash.
“The big question from consumers is, 'How safe is it?'" said IIHS president Adrian
Lund. "All things being equal in safety, bigger and heavier is always better. But among the smallest cars, the engineers of the Smart did their homework and designed a high level of safety into a very small package."
The 1,800-pound Smart fortwo has a steel safety cage and four air bags, including two in front and two on the sides to protect the head and abdomen. And it comes standard with electronic stability control.
Plus, it achieved its crash ratings without the benefit of a front-end crush zone, a key component in reducing injury in serious frontal crashes.
The front-end of larger vehicles are designed to absorb crash energy, allowing passengers to slow more gradually and reduce injury. The longer the front-end crush structure of a vehicle, the less violently occupants are slowed and thus protected from injury. A vehicle's restraints and airbags further slow occupants and spread crash forces more evenly across passengers’ bodies.
To compensate for the lack of front-end crush space, the Smart's restraint system shoulders more of the work of absorbing energy as occupants "ride down" a crash. "We recorded a high head acceleration when the driver dummy's head hit the steering wheel through the frontal airbag," Lund said.
The IIHS frontal-crash test simulates a 40 mph collision with a similar vehicle, while the side crash recreates what would happen if the vehicle was hit in the side by an SUV
at 31 mph. The tests are designed to show how well vehicles of similar size and weight compare, and because no other vehicle is as diminutive as the Smart
Fortwo, front-end test scores can't be compared across weight classes, Lund notes. And a small car that earns a good rating isn't necessarily safer than a large car that didn’t do as well. But
Lund points out that a small car like the Smart fortwo may be safe in urban areas where high-speed crashes are less likely. Just don’t take it on the highway.
In earlier crash tests by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, the Smart fortwo earned a five-star top score in side-impact testing, but the driver’s door unlatched and opened during the test, increasing the chance that occupants could be ejected. While this didn’t downgrade the test score, the feds required that Smart vehicles come with a window sticker that notes the safety concern. The driver’s door also unlatched in the
IIHS side test, but Lund said that injury measurements on the test dummy were low and the opening didn't affect the dummy's movement.
Smart vehicles are hitting U.S. shores and showrooms as fuel prices are hitting record highs. The Fortwo gets 33 miles per gallon in the city and 41 mpg on the highway. German automaker Daimler AG has received more than 30,000 reservations for the vehicle, which has a base price of just over $12,000 for the base fortwo and more than $17,000 for a fully loaded Smart passion convertible.
With today’s news that the Smart
Fortwo’s is relatively safe, you won’t have to risk life and limb just to get great gas mileage.
Photo by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
