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Auto Safety Systems and the Law

New-car brochures and vehicle reviews regularly tout facts and features about new models, and high-tech, advanced safety systems such as dual front airbags and a tire-pressure monitoring system (TPMS). That’s the same as saying it meets current emissions standards: If the vehicle didn’t have dual front airbags and a tire-pressure monitoring system, it couldn’t be offered for sale. Of course, the promotional information often mentions that its star meets current emissions standards, too...

Head Restraints: Comfort Vs. Safety

Car-oriented chat rooms are loaded with complaints about uncomfortable head restraints, which are often incorrectly called headrests, in new cars. No car company seems immune from criticism. Objections come from tall, average and short people. Both the traditional passive and “active” head restraints take hits. Here are a few actual opinions:..

Crash Testing for Safety

For many buyers, especially those with families, safety is a major concern when shopping for a vehicle. The main two organizations that perform automotive safety testing are the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Both have easy-to-use websites (IIHS.org and NHTSA.gov) that provide vehicle ratings...

Virtual Backseat Parents

The day they get a driver's license is a golden moment for teens—and for their parents, it's the day they start getting grey hair. Every time their teen is on the road, their worry meters spike. Now, thanks to technology, parents can virtually ride with their teen drivers wherever they go and monitor their driving behavior; and, in some instances, correct it. Through the magic of GPS, devices are on the market that can monitor a teen's driving speed, map their vehicle's position, monitor seatbelt use, unlock a door and even enforce curfew by turning off the car's ignition or locking the door...

2005 Safety Report Card

"The safety story," says Dr. Adrian K. Lund, COO of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, "is that automakers are making rapid safety changes" and those changes are making some crash testing obsolete...

Active Safety for SUVs

Over the last few decades, consumers have let it be known that safety sells automobiles. In the past, that meant designs to improve the crashworthiness of vehicles and protect occupants from crash forces. Today, major advances in safety equipment can correct driver error and avoid crashes before they occur. Twenty years ago, the car was king. Today, light trucks, minivans, pickups and sport-utility vehicles are kings of the road. These vehicles were recently under a harsh safety spotlight for their high rollover crash incidents, and the weight imbalance when a passenger car and light truck are involved in a crash. In these crashes, over 80 percent of the resulting fatalities occur in the passenger car. In answer to questions raised about the safety of these very popular vehicles, Senator John McCain convened a hearing before the Senate Science and Transportation Commerce Committee on SUV safety. Chairman McCain said he called the hearing, "to examine the incidents of death, injury, and rollover when SUVs are involved in vehicle crashes."..

Car Seat Safety Flaws

Making kids safe in cars seems to be a lot harder than we thought when the first child safety seat made its appearance in 1962. After almost 50 years of legislation and new technology, we still can't get our kids buckled up properly...

Cell Phones Quadruple Chance of Crash

Talking on a cell phone while driving can quadruple your chances of a crash ending with a hospital visit, according to a new study released by the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS). The statistic is an equal opportunity warning. The same statistics apply to women, men, young or old, hands-free or handheld cell phone users. The study, entitled the "Role of cellular phones in motor vehicle crashes resulting in hospital attendance" by S. McEvoy et al, is published in the British Medical Journal, available at bmj.com...

Electronic Stability Control for EVERY Car

All vehicles in the U.S. must be equipped with anti-rollover Electronic Stability Control (ESC) systems by September 2011. Since 1995, when ESC first came ashore on the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, more and more high-end vehicles added the lifesaving technology as standard equipment. Now, the government has ruled that even the humblest passenger car sold in the U.S. must be equipped with ESC...

Explosive Safety

Automobile safety is an explosive issue. Literally. New cars have several features that, if employed in a different manner, would earn you a visit by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and, perhaps, a forced, multi-year vacation at taxpayer expense. If you modified these safety features or employed their components for ulterior motives, the ATF would call them "destructive devices," a category that includes things like machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and rocket-propelled grenades...

Give Your Kids a Safety Boost

Children who weigh less than 80 pounds and buckle up with adult seatbelts are almost four times more likey to be seriously injured in vehicle crashes than kids riding in booster seats, according to a 2000 study reported in the Journal of Pediatrics. The study found that 83 percent of 4- to 8-year olds had graduated to using adult seatbelts too soon. A follow-up study by the same group released in 2003 and based on real-world data showed booster seats virtually eliminated injury to the abdomen and spine in auto crashes...

GM, CDC Partner for Faster Accident Response

In the near future, vehicles may be able to alert emergency crews to how severe the injuries are in a car crash and victims should be taken for the best care. That scenario could result in a decrease of 25 percent in traffic fatalities and a decrease in disabilities resulting from crash injuries. The GM Foundation announced in March a partnership with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the CDC Foundation to provide real-time information through OnStar that will allow emergency medical responders to determine the level of care that crash victims will need before emergency crews arrive at the scene...

Head Restraints

Head restraints get a ho-hum rating on a vehicle's sexy options scale, and most consumers never take the time to adjust them properly. But those little squares on the top of the front passenger seats are an important safety technology that can save passengers from whiplash injuries that leave one million Americans with chronic life-changing injuries every year...

Highway Safety and Crash Testing Organizations

Henry Bliss stepped off a New York trolley in 1899 and was hit and killed by an automobile, becoming the first North American motor vehicle fatality. Since that time, over 20 million people worldwide have died in traffic accidents. Government and private groups work worldwide to get consumers information about the safest cars to drive and safe driver strategies to stem the growing accident statistics...

Interstate Infernos

A total of 266,500 vehicles burst into flames on our highways in 2005. These fires claimed 520 lives, caused 1,300 injuries and almost a billion dollars in property damages, according to a new report by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)...

Light Roads Ahead

As the sun sets, traffic accidents and fatalities spike on American roadways. The government estimates that 2.8 million police-reported crashes including 23,000 fatalities occur annually in the United States at night or under poor visibility conditions. After 45 years of age, everyone's vision begins to deteriorate and nighttime driving becomes more difficult. Two statistics underline the hazards of nighttime driving: 90 percent of a driver's reaction depends upon vision, and driver error is behind 90 percent of highway fatalities...

Passenger Van Safety Patrol

Perhaps the most important thing pastors, principals, and parents can do for the well-being and safety of their congregation, students, and children is to check the tire pressure of the 15-passenger vans in which their charges will ride...

Pedestrian Safety

Softening the punch of motor vehicles when they hit a pedestrian or cyclist is the next step in automotive safety, but U.S. pedestrians will benefit as an afterthought. This fall regulators in Europe will require that all new vehicles sold in Europe pass crash testing designed to mitigate head and leg injuries in accidents with pedestrians or bicyclists. In 2010, much stricter regulations will go into effect. U.S. pedestrians can expect the initial pedestrian-friendly designs to carry over to this market; but, in the absence of comparable U.S. regulations, the more sophisticated pedestrian-friendly technology geared to meet Europe's 2010 regulations may not be packed under U.S. hoods...

Pet Safety in the Car

Blissfully ignorant, 40 million Americans are carrying a 1,200-pound elephant in the back seat of their vehicles masquerading as the loyal family pet. According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association (APPMA), an unsecured 60-pound dog during a 30-mph crash becomes a projectile that could hit a windshield, backseat or his owner with the force of 1,200 pounds. After years of safety campaigns, Americans buckle up their kids in the family vehicle, but most are unaware that the family pet is also at risk in a crash or panic stop...

Pocket Bikes

Buzzing like angry hornets, the mini-motorcycles or pocket-bike craze is sweeping from California to New York. These miniature motorcycles copy the racing looks of Honda, Kawasaki and Harley, but with a tiny stance under two feet and weighing less than 50 pounds. Powered by a two-stroke lawnmower-type engine, they have a pull-cord starter. The price tag starts at about $200, but can go as high as $3,000. The lower price models top out at about 30 mph, but the pricier models can hit 70 mph. Originally used for racing in Europe and Japan, these "pocket rockets" are appearing on urban streets with young male drivers scrunched on the seat just inches from the pavement zipping through traffic...

Protecting Yourself While at the Pump

Friends are warning friends all over the Internet to dock their cell phones or risk becoming a fireball at the gas pump. Yet there has never been one recorded incident of a cell phone causing a fire at a gas station. Those warnings would be far more useful if they admonished friends to protect themselves against static electricity, which has ignited at least 150 fires at gas pumps according to the American Petroleum Institute. Just this month in Albany, Georgia, the Associated Press reported that a hair stylist was pumping gas into her car when her hair burst into flames. Her husband, Camilla firefighter Lt. Bill Marshall said the fire was probably caused by static electricity from his wife's hair rubbing against her clothes...

Safer Nighttime Driving

Most drivers don't use a standard nighttime safety feature—their high beams. Those who do often forget to lower them for oncoming traffic. There are two safety problems here. Failure to utilize high beams shortens the nighttime driver's vision of the road ahead. Cars traveling 35 mph using low beams "out drive" their headlights and can't see far enough down the road to detect and react to potential hazards or pedestrians. The glare from high beams left on when passing an oncoming car or when approaching a car in the lane ahead, can temporarily blind that driver, slowing down their reflexes and increasing their braking distances...

Safety Tips for Winter Driving

Winter weather takes many interesting forms. In Southern California, it brings rain; in Florida, it brings tourists. But in the mountains or above the Mason Dixon Line, it means something entirely different. Those who live in severe winter areas usually have familiar tactics to deal with those mornings when another 18 inches of snow has fallen. If you're a deep-snow novice, though, and plan to head due north or into the mountains for a ski vacation, read carefully. That picture postcard of freshly driven snow laying like a pure white comforter over the landscape can be ugly if you're not used to it. Consider the following as an automotive primer on real winter...

Side Impact Airbag Mandate

When a vehicle barrels into the side of another vehicle even at speeds as low as 20 mph it often means head trauma or death for the driver or passengers in the struck vehicle. The federal government is now demanding that automakers take aggressive steps to protect our heads. U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters announced new side impact safety requirements for all passenger vehicles which will require automakers to provide head protection both in the front and back passenger compartment in side-impact crashes. NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) has worked on the regulation since 2004 but side impact safety has a longer history...

Side-Impact Airbags

When an SUV hits a passenger car in the side, occupants of the car often are killed or suffer severe head injuries. The government is moving to make car occupants safer with new side-impact regulations. A new 4-foot 11-inch crash-test dummy, named for NHTSA Administrator Dr. Jeffrey Runge's mother, Irma, will play the part of small stature females, children and the elderly in the crash testing. For the first time, Dr. Runge said, Vince, a crash-test dummy with the proportions of an average man, will be equipped to register brain injury in side-impact testing. Sixty percent of all fatalities in these crashes are the result of head injuries...

Strict Safety Standards Primary Lifesavers

According to a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), U.S. drivers are safer on the road thanks to legislation requiring automakers to create, install, and improve active and passive safety technologies. Unfortunately, however, drivers seem to be relying a bit too heavily on these newer technologies without sufficiently modifying their driving behaviors, like properly using seatbelts, not drinking and driving, and speeding. Without new vehicle safety technology, IIHS found highway fatalities would have started climbing in 1994...

The Dilemma of Older Drivers

When should elderly drivers hand in their car keys? That question jumped from a family to a national quandary after an 87-year-old driver plowed into a street market in Santa Monica, CA, killing 10 and injuring scores more. But the question has no easy answers...

Top 10 Safety Systems

This year about 42,500 people, give or take 1,000, will die in traffic accidents in the U.S. Though terrible, it could be a lot worse. Without the advances on our following list of Top 10 Safety Systems, the per-mile death rate might be the same as 1966. That would mean more than 160,000 would be killed. This year and next year—and the next. And 1966 was far from the worst for per-mile fatalities...

Volvo Safety Concept Car

Safety is in the eye of the beholder, according to Volvo and Ford engineers who say that 90 percent of all vital driver information comes to us visually. The automakers' recent 7-city tour of the Safety Concept Car (SCC) showcased new technology designed to enhance a driver's view of the road...