IIS and a preliminary report

After reading the article, I think too much is being made out of this. Focus was placed on the wrong subject of the article. The main subject of the article was about IIHS's goal of independently testing and rating these crash avoidance systems. Right now there is nothing. The advanced IIHS track is still construction. Sounds like the Toyota test was just one of many preliminary ones being done to work up a procedure. The "That didn't work" line may have been referencing the test itself, and not the car.

Why was it a Toyota? It simply have been what was in the rotation while the reporter was there. This isn't an official release from the IIHS. Since there is no standard test in place, the v's result on the test has no bearing on anything at this point.

As to Toyota's crash avoidance system. Perhaps relying on radar for it alone isn't the best choice going forward. Not many on the road, but the Corvette has been fiberglass since its inception. I still see plenty of Saturns on the road. The BMW i3 will also be out soon, and carbon fiber is going to become more prevalent. Are the metal frames of these cars enough for Toyota's system to accurately react too?

 

Looks like an Acura MDX to me.

http://media.caranddriver.com/images/13q3/529426/2014-acura-mdx-photo-531812-s-1280x782.jpg

I don't think the IIHS is picking on Toyota. So far I don't think a single Toyota or Lexus has scored better than Poor on the new small overlap crash test. Toyota needs to up their game, I don't think it's because the IIHS decided to design a test aimed at making Toyota fail. Honda seems to be doing far better on the new tests.

 

An observation: Americans love safety improvements ... until they have to pay for them.

 

Has anyone ever done a study on how many people are actually influenced by these tests when buying a vehicle?

 

The pac spends a lot of money with the regulators, and at least as laws have changed IIHS does influence both nhtsa safety testing and cafe standards.

They were not out on the prius when I bought it, and if it had gotten 3 stars that would not have made a difference in my purchase. If it got something like 2 stars much lower than normal that might have affected my purchase. Much of the SUV selling strategy was based on it is safer than a car, and IIHS helped promote that idea.

 

Toyota driver, Honda driver and truck.

 

I think we can look at the latest safety improvement that has caused a decrease in fatalities, other different law enforcement and education. It is traction control that has reduced the number of SUV rollovers. Let us look at the problem from frontline's point of view from 2002, the time the safety issue was well understood.

Before You Buy An Suv... | Rollover | FRONTLINE | PBS

In the 1990s major groups, the automanufacturers, UAW, IIHS, NHTSA argued that the SUV loophole should not be closed and CAFE standards raised because heavy cars like SUVs were safer and created american jobs. Changing cafe would put smaller less safe cars on the road. The data during that time that NHTSA and IIHS had contradicted this idea of SUVs being significantly safer, it just was these SUVs were more likely to kill occupants of other cars. This came to a head with the explorer/firestone fiasco, yet these tire/inflation/etc just highlighted the problem, it did not significantly increase SUV deaths

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Traction control have made the vehicles less prone to roll over. The lack of visibility around SUVs, and the asymmetrical weight, still appears to cause more traffic fatalities in areas with higher percentage of SUVs. There may be other factors involved by more SUVs typically means a higher fatality rate.

Part of this demand was caused by the false promise of extra safety. In 2004, SUV sales peaked.

After the explorer fatalities were widely publicized, ford and other SUV manufacturers added traction control devices that greatly decreased these. IIHS after the fact was pointed out did provide some testing for roll over protection. These tests probably do save lives.

Rollover poses real risks; IIHS announces new roof crush test

The rollover and roof tests are where the tesla S performed the highest. By 2025, I expect the new cafe standards, along with traction control, and roll over testing will greatly decrease roll over fatalities from the 2006 levels. They already well on their way.

 

I think you mean stability control rather than traction control.

 

I may have used the wrong term. The first car I had it in was a 1998 lexus with VSC (that you could turn off). Either way these electronic systems seem like they have prevented many fatalities in high center of gravity vehicles. The previous step forward in safety was the airbag. IIHS IIRC supported these improvements.

The large percentage of large, high center of gravity, hard to see around vehicles appears to have increased the number of fatalities versus how these improvements would have aided the vehicle mix in the 1980s. The IIHS supported changing the vehicle mix to one that is less safe.

Which is why you need to take recommendations from these industry pacs with a great deal of skepticism. Just last year the IIHS repeated that SUVs and heavier vehicles were safer (partially because of the rollover test and stability control. This ignores the injuries and fatalities of accidents that these SUVs cause to other vehicles, as front line rightfully pointed out in the story I linked. It also does not take into account the resources needed to both build and fuel the suv.