Maybe it’s for crash safety requirements? It’s possible they were having trouble meeting ejection mitigation standards. They basically require any opening a that a human head can fit through just be able to prevent someone from flying out during a rollover. This could be their cheapie way to get around that.

Please understand I wasn’t trying to claim the risk is higher for males. Obviously it isn’t, since the study lays out the numbers. I’m just saying if the logic is you are in danger if you don’t have a crash test dummy that matches your body type, then men should be at higher risk then women.

Yes, exactly.  I think mis-spoke a little when I said that men are a higher risk group than women.  Obviously, that isn’t true, as the study shows it.  I was just saying that by the logic laid out in the article (dummies not designed for the occupants), their argument doesn’t hold up.

This is actually really interesting, thank you for this. I’ve been doing this for quite a long time and had never heard of it.

Hi, perhaps that was poorly worded. I wasn’t trying to claim that men fare worse in crash tests. That’s obviously not true, as per the study. Women really do fare worse in real-world accidents. I was merely trying to say that it must not be purely due to the types of dummies, as the article was claiming, because that…

Yes, much of the basis of the dummies is still based on corpse testing.  Even more grisly, a lot of the early research was done with live animals to asses limits of survivabilty (I’ve seen grisly pictures of pigs thrown down elevator shafts and live monkeys with accelerometers drilled into their skulls).

This article shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how crash safety requirements work. As a current crash safety engineer at a major OEM, please let me take a few moments to clear some things up.

They do. It’s part of the requirement that they don’t leak after an impact and removing it would throw off the weight distribution, so all the fluids are either left in place or (if they’re flammable) replaced with a safe, nonflammable fluid of similar density.

They actually do that on purpose. There is so little structure on the outer 25% of the car that a lot of the OEM’s are now purposely crushing their wheels as an energy absorber int he the impact.

10/10, would watch.

Neutral: Out of curiosity, are there any lawyers out there that can explain how the California ban on ICE wouldn’t be a violation of the commerce clause, which prohibits states from overly interfering with interstate commerce?

Oh man the tie-in commercials could be sweet!

Road Rover is a stupid name. There, I said it. But I also read an article on Road and Track yesterday that they are also planning a giant SUV called the Road Ranger. So you’ll have Land Rover Range Rover, Land Rover Road Rover, Land Rover Road Ranger... It sounds like a really unimaginative mad libs.

Yeah, PassionRedXC60RD has it pretty close. It seems like at Volvo, the focus is on safety for safety’s sake, because saving lives should be priority. The general attitude in the industry is to get a good enough rating to not effect sales for as little investment as possible. That’s not to say actual safety is…

Exactly. This doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game, contrary to what many people think. Just because you solve some systemic issue that effects a specific group, doesn’t mean you have to make a new one to screw over the majority.

I agree with you. Sort of. The issue is that, from a very young age, there aren’t equal opportunities for women/people of color. They are, based on their circumstances in life, often driven away from these types of jobs due to outdated stereotypes. All things equal, yeah, people should only be hired on their…

Yeah, that’s not really how it’s going to work. All the enthusiasts and Jalops out there will have the same idea, so no one will buy one. This means in 10 years, all those other enthusiasts will suddenly want to buy one of the very few second-hand ones, some will get modified to hell, some will be wrecked, keeping…

Thanks for this Kristen. I work in vehicle safety for another OEM, and it’s really fascinating to see the difference between how we do things and how Volvo does things. They are totally opposite sides of the spectrum, and although one approach isn’t necessarily better than the other, it’s very enlightening to have…

Isn’t that the Fanta jingle?

There is. Side impact testing is done with a barge running into the vehicle at speed. The barge is the same weight for every car and represents an average sized vehicle. The NHTSA test represents an average sedan and the IIHS test represents an average SUV.