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Smart Shopper Best Car for a new teenage driver
554 messages, Last post on Nov 08, 2009 at 7:33 PM
You are in the Smart Shopper Forum. Your Hosts are kirstie_h & tidester
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Replying to: morin2 (Nov 06, 2009 6:53 pm) The reason he survived was certainly because his old Toyota was so solidly built and all the extra stuff he put on it(the big bull bars and so on saved the engine from ending up in his lap, though the truck was totaled otherwise)) Look, nothing is perfect. little econoboxes aren't much better. If it was me, I'd get my son an old Town Car, but.... 
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Replying to: plekto (Nov 06, 2009 7:25 am)  Maybe if the driver of said Smart was shaken you could load their car into the cargo hold and bring them someplace to calm down. 
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Replying to: tankbeans (Nov 07, 2009 7:16 am) Looks like someone already had that idea. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/smart%20car%20crash1.jpg Of course, you're right - it might be easy to just load into the cargo bay after a crash. I honestly haven't seen anything that bad since VW Bugs were on the road.
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Replying to: plekto (Nov 07, 2009 8:22 am) The sad part is that the first one was probably loaded with 2 or 3 decent sized guys without a forklift. I think they're just too small for our roadways and the number of huge land barges that are floating around. I wouldn't feel safe in one. I'm not talking down about choices that people make about what they drive. That's their prerogative, but something that small is not Smart (pardon the pun). They're barely more visible than a motorcycle. /end off topic discussion. Nice finds with the pics though. |
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Replying to: morin2 (Nov 06, 2009 6:53 pm) In 2006 small pickups experienced 116 driver deaths per million registered vehicles I see that as a fairly meaningless stat. some people drive 5,000 miles a year, others 50,000. i would prefer passenger miles, like airline safety is measured.
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Replying to: plekto (Nov 06, 2009 8:20 pm)
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Replying to: british_rover (Nov 07, 2009 12:52 pm) The sliders/nerf bars are 18 inches high and the front bumper is 40 inches at the top and covers the entire area in the middle. True, the sides aren't protected versus a truck like mine, but I also have a roll bar installed right behind the front seats(there's one in the bed as well - came that way). I figure if they get lucky enough to hit me at the right angle with a SUV where they don't hit the nerf or roll bars first, my number was up anyways. Roling over while off-roading was my #1 concern, so I put the extra protection in for a couple of hundred dollars. |
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Replying to: explorerx4 (Nov 07, 2009 11:53 am) This doesn't give a complete picture either but compare it with 130 deaths per million vehicle miles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety) for cars. On the other hand, 40,000 traffic fatalities each year with 260 MILLION registered vehicles (of all types) works out to about 150 deaths per million registered vehicles. tidester, host SUVs and Smart Shopper
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Replying to: tidester (Nov 07, 2009 9:29 pm) If you look at the actual data, look at the last three rows - that covers insurance claims for people getting injured. If you look at the Tacoma and then the 4x4 version, you'll see a dramatic drop in injuries. Now, compare the data to a small 4 door sedan - almost any will do. There's a massive difference in most cases in safety between midsize and fuill size trucks and SUVs and cars. I'll bring up one of my favorite personal sayings: "There is no substitute for mass." In a crash, big, high, and heavy wins almost every time. And these SUVs and trucks are not tiny 4 cylinder micro-boxes any more. Here is the relevant data from 2005-2007: Tacoma XTra Cab 2wd 74 81 94 Tacoma Xtra Cab 4x4 62 53 66 4Runner 2wd 77 87 94 4Runner 4x4 75 60 68 (2 inches higher, mostly) Buick Lucerne 52 59 82 Buick LaCrosse 74 69 76 Toyota Avalon 79 73 66 (100 is considered the industry average - the SUVs skew the data as you can see, since there are so many on the road) Toyota Camry 131 124 102 Honda Civic 125 124 102 Toyota Corolla 152 144 122 Ford Focus 145 166 137 Nissan Sentra 168 189 154 Toyota Yaris 208 191 193 (yikes) There are a few exceptions, but the rule generally holds true(some suvs and trucks are worse(though still at least as good as cars), and some small cars are much better than you would expect. Dodge Durango 2WD 123 129 123 (worst truck I could find for those years, still equal to the Civic's and Camry's ratings, more or less) VW Beetle 83 88 83 (surprising result) http://www.iihs.org/research/hldi/composite_bw.aspx?y=2005-2007&cv=pip I see a lot of SUVs and trucks in the top list. http://www.iihs.org/research/hldi/composite_bw.aspx?y=2005-2007&cv=med Nine out of the ten are trucks and SUVs. Big wins in a crash, just like common sense tells us it should. The trick is to get big *AND* fuel efficient. That means a 4 cylinder or V6 engine, which is where the imports have a better selection. But you have to research the year and model you are interested in, of course. Many of the older vehicles aren't nearly as good as recent models, and there are specific ones to avoid, naturally. (as an example, even my ancient 4Runner gets a combined score of 93 which is why it's common to add extra protection to get it closer to the 70-80 "normal" range for SUVs) *note - the Volvo 240 of the same year got a 91.* |
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Replying to: tidester (Nov 07, 2009 9:29 pm) |
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