These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the institute's frontal crash test program in bringing about improvements in vehicle designs, |
They don't provide seats with head restraints that provide the kind of protection we're looking for in rear crashes. |
They've done the big things. |
This car is a disaster, ... The structure is poor, and both dummies' heads were hit by the barrier during the crash test. High forces were recorded on the head, torso, and pelvis of the driver dummy. If this had been a real driver in a real crash, it's likely it wouldn't have been survivable. |
This fix didn't work in our test. Forces recorded on the dummy's right leg were high, and a metal pin broke in the dummy's ankle. Ford is doing more research to find a solution and has indicated it will ask the Institute to retest the Fusion for frontal crash performance later this year. |
This level of performance is the norm now. |
This new research confirms what the dummies have been telling us. The dummies say there is a big difference in how well cars protect you. What we see in this real-world data is the dummies don't lie. |
use crash test results with much more confidence. |
Usually when an automaker doesn't ask for the optional test, we presume it means the side airbags wouldn't help much to improve the car's rating. But now Ford has requested a second test, so the Fusion with side airbags may earn a better rating than poor. We'll conduct the test and report the result. |
We think that the rear crash protection could be a little better, and there, we're looking at the risk of neck injury when you're hit in the rear, (say, if) you're stopped innocently at a traffic light and somebody bangs into you from behind. |
We would have preferred for Ford to go back to this performance level for bumpers on the Focus instead of equipping the new model with even flimsier bumpers than those on the recent model Escorts it replaces. |
We're not getting much new information from the tests, and have been looking for a way to do more side crashes, so we have side-crash data for all the vehicles we have frontal results for. |
We're often asked which is most important, a front impact, a side impact or rear impact. And the fact is, you never know what kind of crash you're gonna be in. So what you want, and what we tell people, is to choose a vehicle that does well in all three. |
We're seeing auto manufacturers beginning to do this just to get good ratings in our test. But what we want to see manufacturers putting on their cars are bumper systems that will resist damage in a wide range of low-speed crashes. |
When the institute first tested midsize SUVs in 1996, none was rated good. Now, there are 16 current midsize SUV designs rated good. |