Luxury doesn’t always buy safety

Owning a BMW, Mercedes, Lexus or Volvo may mean a driver will ride in style, but when it comes to safety, such luxury vehicles don’t necessarily have the same cachet. According to recent studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, paying more for a car doesn’t necessarily mean better crash protection.

In its side impact crash tests, IIHS discovered that the 2008 BMW 5 series was the worst performer of luxury sedans, whereas the Kia Amanti, Acura RL and Volvo S80 were best able to provide protection in a side crash. Similarly, in tests simulating low-speed collisions, IIHS noted that “bumpers of luxury cars aren’t luxurious. … Bumpers, even those on expensive cars, don’t resist damage in low-speed impacts.”

In low-speed crash tests conducted at 3 and 6 mph, the Infiniti G35 was the worst performer, sustaining nearly $14,000 in damages. The Saab 9-3 was the best, sustaining $5,243 in damages. The Audi A4 was the best performer among the luxury cars in both front and rear full-width bumper tests, sustaining less than $1,000 in individual tests, yet it still incurred a total damage of $5,831 across all four bumper tests.

“The Infiniti was a disaster, and even the Saab sustained way too much damage. There shouldn’t be much or any damage in collisions at these speeds, especially to expensive and presumably well-made cars,” indicated Institute Senior Vice President Joe Nolan.

Side impacts are the second-most common fatal crash type after frontal crashes. About 9,200 people in passenger vehicles were killed in side impacts in 2005.

“Growing sales of SUVs and pickups have exacerbated height mismatches among passenger vehicles, thereby increasing the risks to occupants of many vehicles struck in the side,” IIHS President Adrian Lund said.

The same problem occurs with “fender benders.” According to the Institute, the purpose of a bumper is to absorb the energy of a low-speed collision before it damages expensive-to-repair parts like fenders and hoods.

“But there are multiple problems, the first of which is that the bumpers on colliding vehicles often don’t line up vertically so they don’t engage to begin with,” Nolan said. Then, even if bumpers do line up, they may not work effectively. “Their aerodynamic styling may allow them to slide under the bumpers of the vehicles they strike,” he said. Or, the bars beneath the bumper covers that should absorb most of the energy in a crash may not be big enough to provide enough protection, he added.

For instance, the Institute said the Mercedes C class’s bumper is mounted so low that it under-rode the barrier in the Institute’s front full-width test. What absorbed the energy of the impact were the grille, hood, radiator, headlight and air conditioning condenser — all of which were damaged and led to more expensive repairs.

When luxury cars do get hit, the higher price of replacement parts drives up repair costs. “Luxury cars don’t perform any better than cheaper cars,” Nolan said of the bumper tests. “There’s nothing luxurious about shelling out thousands of dollars to fix damage from a bump at a speed about like a brisk walk.”

The Institute lamented the fact that federal rules have not kept pace with vehicle changes. The federal government specifies that the zone for car bumpers be 16 to 20 inches from the ground so that car bumpers line up reasonably well to engage each other in collisions. However, the rule has not been modified to apply to minivans, pickup trucks or SUVs. The bumpers on those vehicles are often much higher off the ground, meaning it’s less likely to line up with another passenger vehicle’s bumper.

“This makes no sense, and it won’t be solved by tinkering with the bumpers on cars alone,” Nolan said. “The federal rules have to be applied to minivans, pickups and SUVs, too. Only then will we start to see good bumper match-up in collisions at low speeds.”

Russ Rader, director of media relations for IIHS, said the problem with the existing federal standard is that it is “woefully out of date. The last time the regulation was touched was back in the Reagan Administration, before SUVs and many pickups were mainstream family vehicles,” he explained. “We would like the federal government to apply the same bumper height rules to SUVs and pickups.”

Thus, Rader said IIHS is working on a possible petition to the federal government to urge that standards be updated. One issue, however, is that some SUVs and pickups are truly work vehicles and need a higher ground clearance to go off-road. Yet he said his organization is hopeful that there may be technological ways to ensure that when such vehicles are used on public roads, they can better match up with cars.

In the meantime, IIHS suggests car manufacturers make bumper bars longer so they protect headlights and other critical and costly equipment at the corners of vehicles, and don’t sacrifice function for style by mounting bumpers too close to the car body, which leaves little room to absorb crash energy.

Despite the challenges in improving crash-worthiness of cars, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration noted that the number of highway fatalities is declining. In 2006, 42,642 people died in traffic crashes, a decline of 868 deaths compared to 2005. This 2 percent decline in traffic deaths contributed to the historic low fatality rate of 1.42 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters.

Fatalities of occupants of passenger vehicles — cars, SUVs, vans and pickups — continued a steady decline to 30,521, the lowest annual total since 1993, NHTSA data indicated. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia had reductions in the number of fatalities.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming and Puerto Rico all posted increases in the number of people killed in motor vehicle crashes from 2005 to 2006.

“Tough safety requirements and new technologies are helping make our vehicles safer and our roads less deadly,” Peters said. “But we all must do more when so many are killed or seriously hurt on our roads every day.”

Topics Auto