Posted Aug 25th 2006 6:04PM
Like a lot of people said, the race cars have a roll cage in them, and the ford against mini impact thing... well fords are mexican crap so what can i say? i also agree a lot with UK-Kid. race cars do flip A LOT!! also for Michael Karesh the extra 500 lbs IS going to make a difference for the better. and for Peter: "There's also active vs passive safety. If you are driving an SUV and a car pulls out in front of you, swerving around it could roll you over (the leading type of SUV single vehicle crash)" the roll over crashes of SUV's and trucks are 98% off-road, that means losing control and going off the pavement.
August 29 2006 at 9:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply#13, Russ, the 2004-2006 F150 received the IIHS highest rating for the offset crash test.
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/ratingsbyseries.aspx?id=327
The article you linked to is for a pre '04 F150. The latest gen F150 is the first truck from any manufacturer to get the top rating.
I'm sure the mini is a safe vehicle, but as others have pointed out this was a race-prepped mini with a rollcage. I watched the clip a few times and There did not appear to be any serious impacts to the roof structure during this crash. I think it is silly to infer the relative safety of the mini vs. other vehicles based on this crash.
#20
+1 -- well said!
Geez -- the misinformation and the leaps of stupidity is amazing. You would think that the internet would give more information to people to make them smarter -- instead it seems to have rhe opposite effect.
UK-KID@post 20, As a former racer of many years, I can assure you that the "cause" of the accident was the fact that the Mini driver outbraked the driver directly behind him as he was setting up for the turn. As this happened the driver behind him tagged the Mini's rear and sent the Mini into the fence. This has happened to me on occasion, and I have returned the favor as well. As to the ensuing rollover, this was the effect of the car comming off the barier as you said, but it should be said that as this happened, the driver is just a passenger along for the ride at this point. The car, I'm sure, was set-up for racing with the appropriate roll cage, safety seat, and fuel spillproof tank as most racers are. The size of the vehicle here is absolutely irrelevent.
August 26 2006 at 8:09 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyAs Ed said in comment #4, these race-prepared Mini's - like any typical race car these days - have a full cage, racing seat, harness, driver wearing a helmet and probably a hans device, and possibly other miscellaneous safety equipment as well.
Making any conclusion as to the crash worthiness of a street Mini based on this crash video is foolish. I'm sure a street Mini is a generally safe car in its own right, but don't think that you can slam into a wall and flip it doing 100mph+ on your local interstate and walk away with only minor scratches and bruises.
Mini is so safe, when I do it with Mini Mouse I don't use a condom.
August 26 2006 at 4:42 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWay back in the fifties, a local car dealer somewhere rammed a Cadillac into an "import" and the resultant pictures made a big impact, so to speak. They wound up getting national coverage, a great p.r. scoop.
Then some enterprising import dealer hit a Cadillac with a semi. Road & Track, a proponent of imports, ran a photo of that crash. Cadillac loses.
Of course, car design has changed immensely in the past 50 years, much to the benefit of smaller cars. But it also means that the current Corolla now weighs a third more than a "vintage" Corolla.
In car to car crashes, the biggest effect of mass is in the transferrence of kinetic energy. The heavier object's velocity will be affected less than the smaller one's, and it's that relative velocity change is what makes the heavier vehicle "safer" than the small one. Essentially you get jerked around more inside the lighter car than the heavier one.
Talk about coincidences. Right after I posted my earlier comment on how the mini cooper might not be so great when hit by a big vehicle, I picked my wife up from the airport. She reported to me that on the road near her office today, a woman was killed when a large pickup went out of control (obviously going too fast for its abilities), crossed a grass median, and slammed into her as she sat in traffic, stationary, in a "cute ute". Now, she may well have died anyway, but sometimes mass matters. But in this case, it would have required a much larger vehicle to save her.
August 26 2006 at 12:08 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply8 flips. [had to watch it a couple times through, lol.] I just focused on how many times the wheels were back on "bottom" after the first roll started.
Russ, thanks for the link... the Mini vs. F-150 article had a link to a GREAT article about perceptions of safety in the U.S. http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html
That article is a must read, everybody. Especially to any of you that think trucks & suv's are safer. Minivans and midsize cars are the safest. Minivans are unibody construction, vs the archaic design of trucks/suv's.
Two things:
- Autoblog is having a bad Friday. First they call a Bimmer a Beemer, now they seem to think that a prepped race car (w/ roll cage, fire bottle, driver in protective gear, Armco protected racetrack) performing well in an accident has ANYTHING to do with the safety of the original car. How about Autoblog just stops with the asinine commentary and just posts cool car stuff without trying to sound cool?
- The number of times a vehicle rolls over doesn't count; the impact of each rollover is what counts. A high number of rolls means that the vehicle was carrying a lot of velocity and, instead of that energy being directly transmitted into the passenger cell, a little bit of energy transfered to he chassis on each roll while the majority kept going horizontally. Now, you show me a single rollover where the side of the vehicle takes the brunt of the impact when it lands and that is a nasty accident.
