3 On Your Side: New Vehicle Crash Tests
By Jim Donovan
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A new kind of vehicle crash test aims to curb injuries and deaths related to a particularly dangerous kind of collision. 3 On Your Side Consumer Reporter Jim Donovan tells us why The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is adding another crash test to the battery of safety checks it makes on vehicles, targeting a certain kind of crash.
Most cars now have safety cages for protection in the event of a head-on collision, but a new test seeks to improve performance in crashes that affect a car's outer edges.
"We call it a small, overlap crash because it looks like what happens when just the small front corner of a vehicle hits another vehicle or tree or object. And we looked at the real world data and this is a very important issue for frontal crash safety," says Adrian Lund, President of The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
According to the I.I.H.S., about one quarter of the serious injuries and fatalities in these accidents, involve collisions like the one this test replicates.
"This is still a risk for people, even in vehicles that do well in our frontal moderate overlap test crash or do well in the government full over test crash, don't do well in this kind of test crash, small overlap," says Lund.
The Institute tested 11 midsize-luxury and near-luxury models under the newest guidelines. Three earned good or acceptable ratings: the Acura TL, Volvo S-60 and Infiniti G.
For more information click: www.iihs.org
