Smart Car
How small is too small?
by Steve Holder
If you haven't already seen the Smart car, you'll be amazed by how small it is. At a little over 8 feet long, it seems more like a very fancy golf cart than an automobile.
The Mercedes Benz-built vehicle has been selling in Europe for about 10 years and is making its American debut in 2008. At 40 mpg in the city, it's sure to be popular with the frugal and the eco-friendly crowds.
But much of the buzz surrounding this miniature two-seater (called the Smart fortwo) is not about economy; it's about safety. The often-asked question is, "How will it fare in a tangle with a pickup or SUV?"
The Half-Car
The Smart actually incorporates novel safety engineering, designed to keep the passenger cabin virtually intact in most accidents. Its Tridion safety cell is often compared to the shell around a walnut. It is an ultra-rigid frame that has actually performed so well in crash tests, that the doors can still be opened after a head-on collision.
Most cars employ crumple zones, or parts of the vehicle that are designed to collapse and absorb the shock of an impact. The Smart, however, is so small that its crumple zones are used up quickly in an accident. Its rigid shell is designed to take advantage of the crumple zones of the other vehicle; an ingenious strategy, but one that fails to address collisions with trees or other immovable hazards.
The new vehicles have not yet been crash-tested in the U.S., but the European testing authority Euro NCAP put the slightly larger 2005 Smart forfour through testing, and yielded a four-star rating out of five stars - a performance equal to the European Volkswagen Fox, Mazda 2 and Ford Fiesta.
Safety In Mind
Other safety features in the Smart include electronic stability control and numerous intelligent braking systems to help avoid accidents, front, side and knee airbags, a collapsing steering column and seat belt pretensioners and force limiters.
Still, many people are not convinced. When it comes to safety, it seems they're just more comfortable with a couple of extra thousand pounds of metal surrounding them.
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