Are Tiny, Gas-Saving Cars Unsafe? Today Mine Saved My Life
I rolled my Toyota Yaris three times this morning after hitting a six-foot-high dirt embankment at highway speed. I crawled out with no more than a bump on my head, seat belt burn, and a massively stiff neck. So, for all you small car safety-doubters out there, I’ve now got personal experience to say otherwise.
Inevitably, whenever we post about small electric cars, funky three-wheelers, or any other small fuel-efficient vehicle here at Gas 2.0, we get typical responses along the lines of “It may get 60 mpg, but that thing’s a death trap,” or “It’s nice to drive electric, but would you trust that car to your family?”
After this morning’s shenanigans, I can unequivocally say “Yes. Yes I would trust my family to a small fuel-efficient car, and I’m miraculously alive and mostly uninjured… so no, it’s not a death trap.”
- » See also: CARB Unveils DriveClean, a New Web Tool to Help Consumers Pick Green Cars
- » Get Gas 2.0 by RSS or sign up by email.
My Yaris got 40 mpg and weighed less than half (35%) of a Chevy Suburban. From the outside it may not have looked very substantial, but it sure saved me on fuel costs. And, until today, I would have grudgingly agreed that it may not be as safe as driving a behemoth like the Suburban.
But now that my life has stopped flashing before my eyes, and I’ve had a chance to think, it is simply amazing that I walked away from that crash barely bleeding. I mean, just look at the remnants of my car.
In fact, after today, I think I fared better in my Yaris than I would have in a Suburban land yacht. Imagine how many times I would have flipped in the Suburban and the force of impact that would have come along with crashing a 6,447 pound car?
So, for everybody out there that’s using safety as an excuse to not go green, I must ask you to please take a look at that picture of my car and the wonder of how I walked away well enough to write this post the same day. Then try turning around and telling me that these upcoming small alternative cars aren’t safe simply because they’re small.
It’s more a matter of engineering, and, at least in Toyota’s case, those engineers are miracle-workers.
Editor’s note: This post was updated on October 22, at 8:00 am PST, to correct the curb weight of the Chevy Suburban from 8,600 lbs to 6,447 lbs. 8,600 lbs was the gross vehicle weight rating. 6,447 lbs is the weight of the heaviest Suburban — the 3/4 ton model with four wheel drive. My thanks to Ben Wojdyla, Associate Editor at Jalopnik.com, and the commenters on this post who pointed out that discrepancy.
Actually, check out this article showing that SUVs are far LESS safe than smaller cars:
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html
Jon,
That’s an excellent link. Thanks.
Holy. Crap. Glad you are ok, and alive!! Thank you car!
Congrats on being alive, dude!
Sincerely,
A Fellow Nick
Sadly, the problem is when you smack into a giant Humscalade. Your little Yaris will get creamed. If everyone drove smaller vehicles, you would be fine, but the SUVs will take you out.
…and glad you walked away from your accident.
I would def agree with you on that one.
I drive a Saab 93 now. Before that I had a 1999 F-150 pickup truck.
I was driving home in the snow and went over a bump on the highway and ended up doing a tailspin into a tree.
By luck I had managed to hit the only structural sound point in the car… The area where the door hinges into the frame.
On that truck there are no side impact beams, no roll bar, no crumple zones, … basically nothing except the required airbag which probably helped me considerably… another thing is the steering wheel in that truck doesn’t collapse in an accident.
If I had hit the tree a few inches back I would have been killed… no question about it. The tree probably would have gone straight through the center of the cab.
The Saab gets 35mpg on the highway when I have a lead foot… Its got more airbags than seats, and every single safety feature you could possibly imagine.
So, huge truck or small Saab?
I feel unsafe in large vehicles now. I don’t even like to drive SUVs at all… I now have the feeling that the thing is going to flip on me or something.
So glad to see that you made it out intact! The crumple zones did their job admirably and you’re the proof.
I will be the first to state that our unibody vehicles are almost always safer than equivalent body-on-frame designs, regardless of size, in a single-car accident simply due to their encapsulation of the passenger compartment and tendency to deform rather than exert high accelerational loads. Mass has a negligible effect in a rollover or collision with a nondeformable/nonmovable object (like the good ol’ Earth). However, this design advantage is thrown out the window in a collision with a larger (particular body-on-frame) vehicle - sure, the other vehicle’s occupants may be badly injured due to fewer active safety features (frames do not crumple and absorb energy well relative to a unibody!), but the deformation and acceleration imparted upon a lighter/smaller vehicle will always be greater than that upon the larger. A crumple-resistant frame striking a small car at torso-height is an unfortunate matter of physics that can be alleviated by engineering, but only to a certain extent. Here’s to continued innovation in the field over the next few years!
Yours,
Robert
Robert again - took me a bit to type and I missed the good link in the first response. It’s worth reading. However, also of note is that since 2004, the boom of unibody-based SUVs has significantly decreased per-vehicle fatalities/injuries for both occupants and other vehicles for the reasons that I noted above - ladder frames (almost always sourced from pickups) resist deformation and as such impart tremendous forces. Single-SUV accidents are much safer for 2008/9, but the energy imparted upon smaller vehicles has decreased only perhaps 30%.
my only concern is a small car like the Yaris hitting a large vehicle like a suburban. on a head-on colition i would venture to say that the larger vehicle will do better than the smaller one… any thoughts???