Chrysler's Marketing Mistakes (Forbes)

I agree ... just like in aviation currently. As a pilot, I know that in a crash history says I have about an 80% chance of being the cause of the accident. However, no matter the cause, the crash worthiness of the airplane and its systems are still scrutinized. A finding of pilot error doesn't diminish this aspect of the crash investigation.

Matt

Reply to
Matthew S. Whiting
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No, that is not nice at all. A reversal in direction applies HUGE acceleration to the occupants of the car.

Matt

Reply to
Matthew S. Whiting

As a general comment to this and earlier posts, it is easy for us to sit in our armchairs or at our computers and bemoan the crash-testing regime. In fact there are people/bodies who do try to simulate real-life situations and, as I mentioned earlier, ENCAP has an article on its website about correlation with real life.

In practice every crash is different, so ANY standardised test will only be approximate. I am sure that motor car manufacturers to some extent don't want to be faced with more and expensive crash-testing and may resist moves to change test protocols, but government labs and motoring organisations in Europe do a lot of work in this field (just look at the backers of ENCAP:

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Nevertheless, the manufacturers do care.

I don't know if Merc still does it, but they used to send technicians to the scene of every major accident involving a Mercedes within 25 km of Stuttgart (their HQ and main factory) to see what they could learn. And that's besides all the other safety features that Mercedes invented or introduced that others invented.

At the end of the day if an official body has a standard crash test, whether mandatory or not, every manufacturer will, at the minimum, engineer the car to perform well in the test (there is no 'pass'). Anything else would be commercial madness. That's why a new Renault did so well when the revised ENCAP standards came out, rather than some older Mercedes or BMW. But now models from these makers are also doing well in these tests.

However, there is nothing to stop manufacturers adding features that make the car safer in areas not tested by the standard test, and they do. And if these additional tests make sense, they might be incorporated in the 'official' tests. Offset crashes and higher speeds are too examples.

I don't think car manufacturers want their customers to die in their vehicles!

DAS

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Reply to
Dori Schmetterling

Now you're in a bootstrap situation. There is a real need for the kind of "contrived" testing that is done now in order to have a certain level of safety IMMEDIATELY when a car is introduced into the marketplace. Once it has been there long enough to crash a few times, you can start feeding back real-world crashes to revise the design or (maybe) revoke certification if necessary until changes are made. But you can't throw an un-tested car into the marketplace and simply wait until you start getting real-world crash data!

Reply to
Steve

I did. I found one of those ubiquitous "There's nothing of substance here, so here's a big pile of advertising and a pathetic little search engine" pages.

Sorry, no. You've provided no documentation to back up this claim, which is still thoroughly fishy.

Who? Who makes this claim? Show me.

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Must be a different

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than the one I found -- what I found seems to be some sort of www directory service; no sign of Smart.

Where is the claim? A concrete URL that I can actually enter into my browser and look at would be nice.

As somebody else pointed out up-thread, your description of that crash sounds really grim for the occupants of the Smart: you don't *want* the car to bounce off.

Reply to
Joe Pfeiffer

Sounds interesting, though hardly from an uninterested observer. Unfortunately,

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(is this the site you meant when you referred to
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earlier, by the way?) is password-protected, so I can't look around.

Reply to
Joe Pfeiffer

I suspect that he is seeing no more "red tape" than a big auto company like DC sees when they want to introduce a new car. If he would put up the necessary $$ and simply DO the tests instead of ranting like a pseudo-scientist net.kook, he could certainly get the car through. Heck, small companies that build exotic cars FROM SCRATCH here in the US can get their cars through the process when they want to (Avanti, Panoz, Mosler, etc.) so all it takes is knowledge of the standard, accepted procedures, capability to perform said procedures, and dollars. It looks to me like this kook wants DOT to hold his hand and evaluate non-standard procedures. They aren't gonna do that and I'm GLAD! Thats MY tax money they're not wasting on a kook!

Reply to
Steve

...maybe and maybe not. You apparently have to have a username and password to enter

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.

This certainly doesn't sound like a corporate statement. It sounds like a bitter individual, probably one who isn't following the rules for importation of a vehicle not certified by the manufacturer as complying with all applicable Federal standards for the purpose of research or testing. The procedures are in place. There's a lot of paperwork, but the procedures are in place and it's a good bet he's trying to get around 'em.

Where's that right in the Constitution?

Again, this sounds like someone who's bitter, rather than a corporate or government statement.

It sounds like he doesn't know the relevant laws. They're very accessible and not hard to understand, it just sounds like he's doing it wrong. It also sounds as if you're buying his side of the story without checking the facts. It is not NHTSA's job to crash test a vehicle for him or supply him with a list of noncompliances.

Again, there *is* a procedure by which a noncompliant vehicle can be brought into the United States for the purposes of research or testing. It's easier for a manufacturer to import such a vehicle than for an individual, but it *can* be done.

I really think the guy's just not doing his homework.

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

The guy can't keep a simple website up and running, and you think he has all the answers on vehicle safety compliance?

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

We're being presented with a picture of a car with super-advanced engineering, that has the other manufacturers so frightened that they're resorting to manipulating the US regulatory process to keep it out. He makes it sound like the Fish carburetor.

The major manufacturers all have competent engineering staffs; at the very worst they could buy a Smart and reverse-engineer its super crash resistance.

My point exactly.

Reply to
Joe Pfeiffer

No matter how you try to cut that pie, the fact is to sell a vehicle in the US the manufacture must crash their cars and provide the crash data to prove to the NHTSA that particular vehicle, as configured, meets or exceeds their standards. The 'Smart' can not meet those standards, period. ;)

mike hunt

Daniel J Stern wrote:

Reply to
MikeHunt

It doesn't work that way. If a manufacture wants to sell a vehicle in the US they must crash their vehicle and provide the result to PROVE it meets or exceeds government minimum crash standards ;)

mike hunt

Joseph Oberlander wrote:

Reply to
MikeHunt

Mike: Yes. That's exactly what I said. You're arguing against the wrong guy; go back to sleep.

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

They'd have to TEST the car using US crash testing methodology, as I said.

Reply to
Lloyd Parker

From his sentence, I assumed he was referring to more than just JDP.

You don't need a huge sample for a survey to be valid.

None of them are claiming scientific results either.

Neither was VW apparently -- its popularity has declined steeply after its first year.

Reply to
Lloyd Parker

The DOT hasn't stated anything about the smart passing, since the test is conducted by the automaker itself. DC has not, to anyone's knowledge, performed US-spec crash tests on the smart.

Reply to
Lloyd Parker

That sounds like so much bs. The EPA and DOT have a procedure for a non-manufacturer to follow to import and certify a car. Yes, it's expensive and time consuming, but it can be done -- witness Europa, the Santa Fe company that imported and sold Gelandenwagens for several years before Mercedes started importing the G-class on its own.

Reply to
Lloyd Parker

You obviously aren't an engineer. Yes, each new design has unknowns, but many crash worthiness design techniques translate from one car model to another. Almost no new cars are more than about 50% new these days, and most are probably only 25% new. I'm not saying not to do some testing, I'm saying that balance that with real world results, and if a design fares better in the real world than in a highly unrealistic test (very few crashes are into solid concrete), don't hold manufacturers to the test standard and thus compromise a design.

Matt

Reply to
Matthew S. Whiting

I perused this, but didn't see much on what I'm talking about. Most of the 5 major areas of research are being done via computer modeling (one of the 5 is still blank). I did see the link saying that 100 accidents had been investigated, but I didn't see any real data. The discussion seemed focused on injuries to the occupants, not to how the cars performed structurally in the crash, what fire hazards were present, etc.

Certainly all this is worthwhile stuff, but isn't even close to an NTSB aircraft accident investigation near as I can tell from this site.

Matt

Reply to
Matthew S. Whiting

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