Um, wasn’t it the WHOLE POINT of my original post criticizing BMW for failing to take into account the IIHS’s testing methods and BMW’s very awful reasoning for explaining why it failed?

If BMW overstates (as I believe it to be) the speed, how much would be ok? 5 mph?

For the nth time on this post, I KNOW what a conservative speedometer means.

Dude/dudette, I’m not disagreeing with you.

BMW’s excuse is that the IIHS may have tested the car at a speed above the designed system. The test was conducted at 37mph. The system works up to 37.5mph.

You and RevengencerAlf are both arguing that this is a software problem.

I agree, but how does that help BMW’s argument? Unless they tied their avoidance system to the speedometer reading, which would be dumb.

Volvo first developed such a system, claiming for it to work up to 40mph. The industry likely came together to negotiate certain test points to design for.

It’d be more helpful if any self-claimed engineer actually understood the test. From IIHS:

I’m not arguing what “conservative” is supposed to mean. My problem is BMW is misstating “conservative” to the point of countering its own point; it is claiming that IIHS was testing the car at a speed faster than designed, while stating that its car’s speedometer is conservative. Just like you said, in order to…

What is this? An HUD for ANTS?!

I used a grade school metaphor, but engineering doesn’t work that way. Elevators can’t just drop a few pounds past the posted maximum weight; a truck can’t break right past its stated max towing capacity.

If that’s the case—and I have no reason to doubt it—BMW has even less excuse to accomplish something that the Honda CR-V, Subaru Forester, Toyota RAV4, and Volvo XC40 all achieved with “the highest ratings in IIHS’s testing”, while 2019 Chevrolet Equinox, the 2018–19 Hyundai Kona, the 2019 Kia Sportage, the 2018–19…

But that’s his (and my) point: BMW is going the opposite. They are saying that the speedometers are under-estimating the actual speed (which would infer that the testing is done using the in-car system, which is a bit strange, but I’m assuming BMW knows at least how the test is conducted).

If you’re going to get specific, BMW said:

I asked BMW for comment, and a spokesman gave me the following:

Theory: the lady in black used to be the beige car’s driver’s lover, who lied and stole all her money to be with his current passenger. Which explains why he’s turned awkwardly and slouched down trying to shield his face. Broken-hearted and just plain broke, the lady in black takes on the job of a live-in housekeeper…

“Maybe the dying sports car market killed off the SLC.”

Only if you have RWD, so the front end would flip up like a BOSS.

It’s a bit of what the Volvo designer said, but that excuse has long been used to justify the ugly flip side to that coin, which is to make the wheel-to-body ratio larger than it really is. This design trick is often used to make the wheel wells look bigger than they really are and to make the car look “slimmer” in…