Survive your next car crash

Here’s how:

By John Cadogan

THE CRASH LAB
ANCAP – the Australasian New Car Assessment Program – crash tests cars and publicises (often to the chagrin of car makers) the ability of each to protect you when it all goes horribly wrong. More than 200 of these stretching back 15 years are online at ancap.com.au.

ANCAP reduces the complexities of crash testing to a simple star-rating system. Five stars is the best, down to one. ANCAP chairman Lachlan McIntosh says there’s a gulf between compliance and excellence in crash performance. “There are significant differences in safety between a basic vehicle that just meets the [safety] regulations and a four- or five-star car.”

STAR PERFORMERS
Michael Paine is ANCAP’s technical manager, a veteran of some 250 crash tests. “Humans are not designed to survive high-speed impacts,” he says. “But for every 10 people killed in a two-star vehicle, we could expect five to survive if they’d been protected by five stars. It’s that drastic.”

IMPACT DRILL
ANCAP conducts up to three internationally recognised crash tests to determine a vehicle’s star rating. These simulate what in the real world would be head-on collisions, side (T-bone) crashes at intersections and side-on impacts into poles. The doomed vehicles are bought off the showroom floor, anonymously.

HEAD-TO-HEAD
Every vehicle tested goes head-to-head at precisely 64km/h with a massive concrete block. The block is fitted with a crushable aluminium face to simulate the front of a car, and 40 per cent of the front of the car (on the driver’s side) hits the block.

Four crash-test dummies participate in the crash – two adults in the front and an 18-month-old and three-year-old in the rear, both in child restraints. Measurements taken from the dummies and high-speed video are used to determine how well the car’s underlying structure and clever tech (airbags, seatbelt pre-tensioners, etc) have protected the fragile cargo.

SIDE EFFECTS
Most cars do a side-impact test as well, where a special 950-kilogram sled (think: Toyota Yaris-size) shunts the side of the condemned vehicle at 50km/h. As in the front test, the sled wears a crushable aluminium face and the car carries the full complement of four dummies, albeit special side-impact ones called “EuroSID”.

Higher vehicles (think: 4WDs) get a free pass from this test because experience has shown their occupants are likely to get the full points for protection thanks to their increased elevation holding them above harm’s way.

POLE POSITION
Only vehicles with five-star aspirations sit for the “pole” test, in which the vehicle is thrown – literally – at a solid steel pole in line with the driver’s head. Speed is “just” 29km/h but, according to Paine, the impact is severe.

“If your head isn’t protected by a side airbag, 29km/h is almost certainly fatal here,” he says. “I saw my first pole test in Japan in 2002. I came back insisting everyone I knew buy a car with that head protection. It makes such a drastic difference to survival.”

CLASS CASUALTIES
Most cars on sale in Australia offer four- or five-star protection, though there are still some offering just three stars. But there are plenty of one- and two-star utes and vans on sale.

Michael Case, ANCAP’s technical manager, says working-class Australians are often unwittingly second-class citizens on safety. “Commercial vehicles as a group haven’t improved at anything like the rate of passenger cars,” he says. “Their safety standards still aren’t as high as for passenger cars.”

HIT OR MISS
“Beware of cars with less than four stars,” ANCAP’s official communications advise. To achieve five stars, vehicles must perform well in all three crash tests, achieving minimum scores in each. Five stars aren’t awarded to vehicles without electronic stability control, a skid-protection system that can help you avoid hitting something if you lose control.

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