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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