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Fifty kilometres per hour doesn’t sound fast, but it’s enough to leave a popular small car barely recognisable in a head-on collision.
I was invited by the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) to witness a crash test of a new version of the Suzuki Swift hatchback and the results were horrifying, but it is something more Aussies should witness. It was given a one star safety score with very poor results for adult and child occupant protection.
The test I saw is called the frontal offset crash test. It propels the car at 50km/h into a 1400kg trolley shaped like the front end of another car also travelling at 50km/h.
The collision takes in the driver’s side half of the front of the vehicle and is designed to replicate a head-on collision when a car veers into another lane.
It is a truly destructive recipe for what is the same speed as most suburban streets.
It wasn’t just the damage done to the vehicle, which was extensive, but the sound and visual explosion that accompanied it.
The test brought into sharp focus the dangers present on our roads not just at extreme speeds but at a relatively low pace, too.
It proved a car can turn into a weapon when placed in the wrong or distracted hands. It is something new drivers should be made to view more often and be part of the education process. There is no greater display of “your actions have consequences” than the crash test.
Especially when newer drivers generally buy cheaper, smaller and lighter vehicles, putting them at greater risk.
ANCAP boss Carla Hoorweg said previously smaller cars are at a disadvantage because of their physical size, which puts the ever-growing footprint of vehicles on Australian roads into perspective.
The Toyota RAV4, Australia’s best-selling non-ute, has grown by about 500mm in length, 150mm in width and 250mm in height, as well as being about 500kg heavier since its inception in the 1990s.
Even popular small cars such as the current Mazda3 hatchback now weigh more than 1400kg.
Australia’s best-selling vehicle for the past two years, the Ford Ranger, weighs well over two tonnes.
Now take into account the growing influx of jumbo SUVs and American pick-ups on Australian roads.
The Ram 1500 pick-up tips the scales at between 2500kg-2750kg unloaded depending on the variant, which is more than a 1000kg more than the impact trolley used in the crash test. It is a similar story for the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado and Toyota Tundra.
ANCAP told CarsGuide earlier this year it had concerns about the extra-large utes.
“We’ve definitely got concerns. There are a lot of community concerns we are fielding,” said Hoorweg.
“We’re looking at vehicles that are being designed for the US market, they’re not necessarily going to have a focus on pedestrian protection or vulnerable road-user protection, that’s not a focus in those regulations. So we know there’s going to be a gap there.”
For now, full crash tests of big utes are off the table for ANCAP due to the exorbitant costs of buying five vehicles of each model needed to conduct the different crash tests.
Hoorweg said crash tests might not give the best data anyway, as the vehicles’ size, weight and ride height mean they are likely to perform better in crash tests compared to smaller and lighter vehicles.
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