smart fortwo - A Safe Purchase?
One aspect that smart's parent company, Dailmer (maker of Mercedes Benz vehicles), likes to promote is the fortwo's Tridion safety cell. The construction is supposed to give the fortwo's body an amzing amount of strength and ridigity. As you can see in this video from Fifth Gear, the fortwo does indeed have a very strong body structure.
However, because of the small size of the fortwo, it lacks the crumple zones that other larger vehicles offer. These crumple zones are designed to gradually dissipate the forces of a crash, before they impact the passengers, thus lessening the force that the passengers experience and reducing the chance of injuries. In recently released crash tests by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the fortwo scored four out of five stars for front driver safety and a disappointing three out of five stars for passenger safety. While it scored an excellent five out of five stars in side-imapact testing, the door did open during the crash, perhaps offering a greater chance of being ejected from the vehicle.
When tested for rollover resistance, the fortwo only scored three stars our of five. This is a worse performance than some SUV's out there.
For comparison, the Honda Fit scored five our of five stars for front and side impact protection for its front passengers and scored four out of five stars for rollover resistance. The Toyota Yaris scored five stars for front impact for the driver and four for the passenger and four stars for rollover.
It is important to note that the front crash test scores are only comparable with vehicles in the same weight class. Since the laws of physics still apply, if any of these relatively light vehicles collides with one weighing more, the lighter vehicle will generally come out on the losing end of the encounter.
Here is a video of a fortwo and a Mercedes Benz S-Class hitting in a common offset crash scenario:
Because of the fortwo's light weight and relatively poor stability, it is thrown over into other lanes of traffic, turning over on its side. This could offer the opportunity for secondary impacts with other vehicles, risking further injury to the fortwo's passengers.
When you consider that the Fit and Yaris get similar mileage to the fortwo (the Fit and Yaris will cost you $14 and $10 more/mo respectively to drive 15K miles/year), they offer the flexibility to carry more passengers (including children) and have more cargo room, the fortwo doesn't seem to be the smartest purchase you could make if you were in the market for a small vehicle. Frankly, unless you live in a crowded urban center like Manhattan or San Francisco, the fortwo doesn't make much sense to me.
I am not saying that the fortwo is an unsafe vehicle. I am simply pointing out that it is at a tremendous disadvantage when it has to deal with not only three-ton SUV's out there, but also more common larger two-ton passenger vehicles. This is especially true if you plan to purchase one to drive anywhere other than congested, slow moving, city streets. This is a factor that should be taken into consideration when deciding if the fortwo is the smartest vehicle for you to purchase. (Sorry, I tried to keep the "smart" puns to a minimum.)
- Posted by
- Lee Scott April 8, 2008, 5:34 AM
- Permalink
- Categories:
- Car Buying, Fuel Economy
...but they're so darned cute!
The trend should be to safely move to lighter vehicles. This is a smart start. Pun Int...
Yep, anyone who considers one of these should really look at its curb weight vs. that of the avg. vehicle in the US and monstrosity class SUVs like the Tahoe, Suburbans, Expedition, Escalade, etc. along w/simple physics: kinetic energy= 1/2 * mass * velocity^2.
The above monstrosity class SUVs weigh >5000 lbs and the real monsters like the H2 weigh 6400 lbs.
I personally abhor huge SUVs (as I drive a 2890 lb. Prius and a 3210 lbs. Nissan 350Z) but per http://www.epa.gov/oms/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s07001.htm, the avg weight of 07 model year light duty vehicles in the US is 4144 lbs. Current typical family sedans weigh ~3100 to 3600 lbs now. Even an 08 Civic sedan is 2628-2806 lbs. An 08 Mercedes S550 weighs 4465 lbs, btw.
The Smart fortwo is only 1808-1852 lbs.