Tag: Crash Test

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Cars

Mercedes Crash Investigation Department

Mercedes crash profilers, you may not have heard about this before. Actually me too! Crash profiler is a team working in Mercedes to investigate the real crashes, and improve the existing and future vehicles. Mercedes revealed a short footage about this team, and how they work. I hope Mercedes will expand this department to other countries as well.

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Cars

The First Crash-Test Movie

I found the first crash test movie of human kind Unfortunately, it was not conducted by cars; instead it was conducted by two trains. During the California State Fair at Sacramento on 13-20 September, 1913; two locomotives were crashed head-to-head. I could not find any information, why they did something like this. Or what was the point of this action.
Eventually, this footage is officially the first crash test recorded in history. According to footage, two locomotives crashed at the speed 90 mph (145 kph). There are no information about any casualties!

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Cars

Crash Test @ 193 kph (120 mph) in Ford Focus

Many people may not have heard of the Fifth Gear. Unfortunately, it is not well known like Top Gear around the world. However, Fifth Gear always provides critical knowledge about road safety. Recently, they did an extreme crash test with a Ford Focus.

They tried to see what would happen when you crash a Ford Focus to a concrete wall at the speed of 120 mph (~193 kph). This speed is the triple of the usual Euro NCAP crash tests and never been tested. Also, concrete wall increases the impact more than the deformable wall! Just watch the footage and see, what would happen if a car crashes at the speed of 193 kph!

Video’s copyright
Fifth Gear

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Cars

No Comment: New Volvo S60 crashed during demo !

New Volvo S60 has a new safety system which fully stops the car under the speeds of 35 km/h. This system was demonstrated to press but it did not work.

Picture are taken from;
Volvo and Wired Websites
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Cars

Difference of all weather and winter!

When I first saw the video in Autocar Magazine’s website about winter tyres, I thought that someone finally wants to tell the difference between winter tyres and normal tyres. Actually my expectations ended up when I started watching the video from Autocar.
They had BMW 6 Series with summer tyres and BMW 1 Series with all weather tyres. Jamie Corstorphine was representing the test and he told the difficulty of arranging winter tyre in winter. Of course, winter tyres are sold in summer therefore it is hard to find in winter! And Autocar should have done a winter tyres test earlier. Why? Because, UK is a cold country. You don’t have to have snow for winter tyres. When it is winter, you should use winter tyres.
Let’s investigate in-depth; winter tyres are made up of two words. First word is winter and second word is tyres. We all know what are tyres and we also know what winter is. Winter is the coldest months on calendar which has high potential for ice on road, snow or any other dangerous conditions. This means, when it is winter, you should use winter tyres. Of course, Autocar will say there is no snow how we can show the difference. The same test conducted by German magazine Auto-Motor-und-Sport for many years and they always show the winter tyres’ performance advantage in winter time in dry road (without any snow). And we learned that material structure of winter tyres are providing better handling, better braking, better safety in cold temperatures. This means, you don’t have to wait for snow to test winter tyres! Just prepare two “same” cars and one of them will have winter tyres and the other will have summer tyres and conduct a braking test on a normal road. And observer their concering performance then you will see differences. Sorry Autocar, this is a very bad video !
All weather tyres are casual sneakers and winter tyres are boots. So try to walk with casual sneakers on an uncasual surface ;)
Here is the Continental EcoContact 3 (which can be considered as all weather) and Continental WinterContact. Are they same ?
Here is the video;

And here is the proper testing;

Pictures are from;
Continental Website
Video is from;
Autocar Youtube Channel

Five Stars Hotel in Crash Test

During last ten years cars’ safety significantly improved. The first generation Ford Mondeo had only two stars and after ten years it turned into rock solid. Actually this story is similar with every other brand, after ten years most of the cars on market have four or five stars from EuroNCAP (Independent road safety organization).
For ten years; front impact, side impact, child protection was enough for the cars. Usual crashing which we are very familiar on TV, hit the car to something. However as they becoming more solid they tend to resist every kind of shock! And their stars are rising, like hotels. But after some point all hotels have five stars but which has the real five stars? It is similar with the cars also, Ford and Mercedes has five stars.!
But there is significant gap with some brands and competitors. Mercedes introduced Pre-Safe technology in 2002, which could detect a possible crash and stretches the seat belt, closes windows and prepares for crash; may be an ejection seat in near future. And they also developed this technology further and now; under the brand of BAS Plus, car could able to detect the traffic in front of the car. If the traffic is not moving and also driver is not moving, car automatically brakes up to %40 and even if there will a crash, the exposure will be lower. So these kinds of systems, even if the drivers is willing to crash somewhere is protecting passengers more than the equivalent vehicles.
So why EuroNCAP does not rate these systems? Yes, they start to rate them! Does it have ESP? Does it have beeping for seat belt? One car is stopping by itself and the other one is just beeping. Very rational! They should focus more on rating active safety systems. The important point; is not to crash!
Also why do the cars have always front impact crash? In whole world; cars only hit by front? Of course not, the car which hits something from the front is directly hits to others car’s back. What a coincidence! Therefore, EuroNCAP should start different crash tests to change their rating.

Please click for more information about EuroNCAP and your car’s rating.
http://www.euroncap.com/

EuroNCAP, Mercedes E Class (W212) Crash