Road racing, track driving, street driving… hell, they’re all dangerous to a point. Take the lucky bastard in this Mazda Miata for example – throughout the entire video, he was nice and smooth with no real drama to speak of. Then all of the sudden the camera shutters and this poor guy goes ass over teakettle. Luckily the Miata is a great car and it looks as though this guy was running the proper belts and roll bar. What the video really shows though, is how fast and without warning accidents can happen. So, to all you guys out there who love the thrill of the track, make sure you’re suited up with the proper equipment as it can literally save your life.
Taking a very well-worn page from their Swedish subsidiary’s book, Ford unveiled today the newest innovation in passive safety technology: the world’s first inflatable seat belt. Set to appear for the first time in the 2011 Ford Explorer, Ford claims the new belt combine the most important safety components of an airbag and a seat belt to create the ultimate exercise in overprotective motoring. When deployed, the discreetly folded airbag breaks through the belt and inflates across the passenger’s chest, increasing the diameter of the seat belt and allowing it to act more effectively as a restraining device. “It’s a very simple and logical system, but it required extensive trial and error and testing over several years to prove out the technology and ensure precise reliable performance in a crash situation,” said Srini Sundararajan, safety technical leader for Ford research and advance engineering.
Unlike the death trap for children both seat belts and airbags are often demonized as, Ford’s Inflat-o-Belt (we want credit for that Ford) is safe for use by young children or malnourished adults and supposedly fits more comfortably than a traditional belt. “Ford is pioneering inflatable seat belt technology to help enhance crash safety protection, while encouraging more people to buckle up with a more comfortable belt,” explained Paul Mascarenas, Ford vice president, Engineering, Global Product Development.
It was a dark and foggy night … when a 24 year old San Franciscan missed a turn on the notoriously twisty California Highway 1 and flew off the road at a place appropriately called Devil’s Slide. The Mazda sedan plunged 150 feet, but landed squarely on its wheels, and the man was unharmed save a bump on the head. The reason, said CHP Sergeant Trent Cross, is that “[h]e did what he was supposed to do, he wore his seat belt … If he hadn’t been wearing it, there is no doubt it would have been fatal.” He was able to call 911, and despite having to wait 45 minutes while search crews peered through the thick fog, he was hauled up from the bottom and is doing fine. So, just for the record, if you’re driving a twisty cliff road at 4 am in the thick fog, please be wear a seat belt just in case you happen to careen off the edge.
You order a bedroom set for your son, but when it arrives, the mattress you thought would be included in the deal is missing. What do you do? If you’re Robert Caton of Hampshire, UK, you guzzle two bottles of cheap whiskey, hop in your ‘83 Rolls-Royce, and plow through the store in a drunken, poorly conceived rampage. Oh, and not on the first try either – he made two unsuccessful attempts to raze the store before finally succeeding in careening the Roller through the window, causing roughly $100,000 worth of damage.
If you ever wondered what the sadistic minds at the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety do to celebrate their birthday, stop. It’s horrible. IIHS has been smacking cars together now for 50 years, and so to celebrate, they decided to show the world how far vehicle safety has come. To do this, they procured a relatively intact, low-rust 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air and proceeded to hurtle it against a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. The results are conclusive: smacking an old car into another object destroys the old car. It’s the equivalent of a nursing home celebrating their anniversary by smacking around one of their elderly patients in order to prove something we already know. For your information, the hypothetical driver of the Malibu would have had a mild injury like a sprained ankle, and the driver of the Bel Air would have died instantly. Make the jump to satisfy your morbid curiosity with a video.
Presumably after experimenting with large quantities of hallucinogenics and ensuring the check for the bribe money cleared, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has crowned both the 2010 Chrysler Sebring and 2010 Dodge Avenger two of its Top Safety Picks for 2009. The IIHS contributes Chrysler’s achievements to their multi-prong approach to safety, which includes just enough features to satisfy the IIHS’ laundry-list of acronyms and the amnesty commonly associated with being a federally owned and operated corporation.
In “Well of course it did, it’s a Volvo” news: the 2009 Volvo C30 was one of five two-door coupes to participate in the latest bout of IIHS safety testing, earning it a coveted spot on the IIHS TOP SAFETY PICKS list. Thanks singularly to the technology they hustled from Volvo, the Ford Focus also managed to walk away from the crash scene with stellar ratings, outranking its fellow test participants, the Chevy Cobalt, Scion tC, and Honda Civic.
“Overall the results for 2-door cars are good news,” explained David Zuby, Institute senior vice president for vehicle research . “All but one earn good ratings in our frontal offset test. Only 2 of the 5 earn this rating for protection in side crashes, but none of the 5 earns anything less than an acceptable rating. This is pretty good, considering how demanding the side test is. It simulates being struck by a pickup or SUV.”
Have traffic deaths increased drastically with higher speed limits? That’s what a new study would like you to believe with its incredible-sounding conclusions: 12,545 deaths are attributable to higher speed limits! Sounds like lowering speed limits would save lives, right? Wrong. The study looked at the years 1995-2005, and didn’t look at any recent data. So what does the recent data show? Contrary to what the first study would have you believe, traffic deaths are at their lowest levels since the early 1960s. Lower speeds would save more lives, but so would not driving at all. Click through for more analysis.
For those with sensitive dispositions or of unnaturally weak constitutions, you may want to avert your eyes, as the carnage that unfolds is not pretty. On the other hand, if you thought that Brilliance European crash test that made the rounds a while back was the coolest thing that you’ve ever seen in your life, you should click the link below and watch this Holden Commodore go all accordion-like.
In keeping with the gratuitous Mustang love ardently displayed on RideLust today, this newest piece of breaking news only further cements our standing belief that the Ford Mustang is the Ric Flair of muscle cars (albeit with less leathery man boobage). Today, after a rigorous bout of testing and what we imagine were several pairs of soiled undergarments, the 2010 Ford Mustang has emerged from evaluation with a 5-star safety rating from the U.S. government. Officially endorsing the 2010 Mustang as hella fun and hella safe, the report awarded the reigning champ with a sweeping victory, issuing a 5-star rating for both driver and passenger front/side crash tests and superior rollover performance.
