Safety
Safe and Not-so-safe Cars
With good safety credentials being an important factor with any new car purchase, it was interesting to find out that a few new cars didn’t perform as well as I’d expected they may. The tests were carried out over the 2018-and-2019 period by the team at the Euro NCAP facility. The following are four of the worst 2018/2019/2020 cars you’d want to crash in. Then come the best current cars you’d want to be in if you were involved in a serious crash.
NOT SO GOOD:
Jeep’s Renegade 4×4 SUV, in the frontal crash test, showed it as being a bit weak in offering good support during the frontal impact. Your neck is an important part of your body, and it was evident that the systems weren’t quite up to speed. Also the pole test found the car’s structure to be weak in protecting the front seat occupant. Poor whiplash protection during a rear collision, and weak protection during the side pole test showed the Jeep Cherokee as being a bit light. This was its reason for scoring just the four out of five stars.
Sadly, the small Suzuki Jimny 4×4 only scored a three-star crash testing result. The structure isn’t up to the task of keeping its occupants safe in pole tests and frontal crash tests. Even the airbag didn’t have the pressure to prevent the dummy bumping its head on the steering wheel –ouch!
A big surprise came my way when I discovered that the Jeep Wrangler scored just a one-star out-of-five for overall safety capability during the crash tests carried out by the Euro NCAP team. The windscreen pillars and the footwall structures reached their full limit of protection – due to their serious deformation patterns when put through the frontal impact test. You wouldn’t want to be going faster than 40 mph!
Least safe is the Fiat Panda. It didn’t score any stars of the five available. Enough said!
VERY GOOD:
Euro NCAP calculate the best vehicles from their weighted sum of the scores in Adult Occupant, Child Occupant, Pedestrian and Safety Assist assessments for every car tested. According to Euro NCAP, the best-of-the-best in 2019 happened to be the:
Supermini: Audi A1 and Renault Clio
Small family car: Mercedes-Benz CLA and Mazda3.
Large family car: Tesla Model 3, BMW 3-Series and Skoda Octavia.
Small Off-Road/MPV: Subaru Forester
Hybrid and Electric: Tesla Model 3
Larger off-road: Tesla Model X and SEAT Tarraco – which shares its DNA with the Volkswagen Tiguan and Skoda Kodiaq.
There are some nice cars in the list above. It’s great to see Subaru still delivering the goods along with the German marques. Looks like Tesla has their cars well sorted, as well.
Space Saver Tyres; A Flat Option.
The last three decades have seen many innovations that have been placed into cars, trucks, and other forms of automotive motion. Anti-lock brakes, electronic stability control, airbags, even FM radio and CD/MP3 playing capability. Tyres have improved in size, water drainage, and grip levels. Then there’s the space saver tyre. Intended to be a weight saving device and providing an option should a main tyre receive a puncture, just how effective can one of these be?
Given that many travel for decades without ever suffering a flat tyre or indeed any form of damage, having a space saver does make perfect sense. They’re lighter and by virtue of their name, simply don’t take up as much room, especially with the rise of larger diameter wheels and tyres. However, HOWEVER, it’s also fair to expect that most of the time, that when they get called upon for usage, that one is in an area not far from either home or a tyre retailer.
Herein lies an issue or two. First up they’re rated for a speed of fifty kilometers per hour. Maximum recommended velocity is eighty. Maximum recommended distance is 450 kilometres. That’s all fine when you’re in the built up areas surrounding your home, but when you’re three hundred kilometers away from home, in a car that’s not your own but a press review car, and one that’s ostensibly soft road capable, then there’s a problem.
Suzuki, like many car makers, fits its vehicles with a space saver. The Vitara All-Grip is fitted with Continental tyres and they’re 17 inches in diameter. Although it also comes with a switchable drive system, splitting torque to the rear wheels as well as the front, it’s not really intended for much else than tarmac with perhaps a bit of mud and sand work occasionally. Again, most people would do this within reach of assistance.
The Vitara was driven from the Blue Mountains to Canberra to visit the financial controller’s mother in hospital. Upon arrival it was noted that the right rear had a bottom flatter than a steamrolled pancake. What looked like a screw was later found to be a two inch on either side vee nail. What was also notable was that the Vitara’s handling did NOT exhibit any form of instability.
Thankfully a change of tyre had the Vitara suitable for driving. But remember, dear reader, that we’re three hundred kilometers from home and in between are roads rated from 100 to 110 km/h…Playing into favour was the time. Any later and finding a tyre store close with which to do a repair or swap would have been problematic, a problem that would have been instantly solved if a full sized spare had been provided. As it turned out, the inner side exterior sidewall had been scored enough to lessen the structural strength and thereby rendered it unuseable.
Further providence came in the form of the press contact and a Bob Jane’s within a safe speed fifteen minutes away. Again, if a full sized spare had been fitted neither a visit then nor an overwhelming ninety minute wait from entry to departure have been required. Consider, too, that if a place had not been available then a three hour return journey would have been at least four and with the end result, at minimum, being a space saver spare on the verge of unuseability.
So what options are there? The initial diagnosis was to fit a plug and patch. Potentially illegal, according to some. If it had been a “simple” nail, perhaps a can of that inflating and sealing goo might have helped. Stress that word “might”
What about fitting run flat tyres? Hmm…not an option unless you’re a royal or a communist country dignitary like Trump. They’re also severely speed and distance limited, with a recommended top speed of ninety kilometers per hour for a maximum distance of just eighty kilometers. Again, not suitable for long haul drives.
Then there are slightly different options like full sized spares on a steel wheel. Cheaper, but heavier. Nuff said. Full sized spare tyres that again are distance limited to their compound. Nup. What about the space saver itself? Well, as stated, speed and distance limited. BUT, and that’s a big but, bigger than a Kardashian’s actually, your car’s stability and braking systems can be negatively affected.
Emergency distance braking is increased. A study by the RACV proved conclusively that space saver tyres affect stopping distance. The vastly smaller footprint also means traction is compromised and contributes to instability under braking.
Simple solution: bin the space saver and fit a full sizer.
The Holy Hand Grenade Of Antioch.
Followers of Monty Python will get this once some more has been explained. Perhaps this will help: “The number thou shall count to shall be three. No more, no less.” Still from the same film and reference point but what exactly has this to do with cars?
Easy.
Some cars allow the indicator stalk to be gently touched and it will automatically flicker three times. No more. No Less. Unfortunately, for the three point seven percent of Aussie drivers that know how to indicate, this is how many times around thirty percent of that three point seven will flash. The rest are heavily weighted towards none at all and the tiny remainder will indicate to the legal standard, being (in the case of changing lanes) before moving from their current lane to having ALL of their vehicle in the new lane.
Those that indicate, begrudgingly it seems, will do so three times. Most of the times this finishes with barely half of their car in the new lane but more often than not they either haven’t begun to move or they are about half way across. On a recent 1200 kilometre round trip from Sydney to the south coast of NSW and back, the number of drivers of cars, trucks, and buses (alarmingly the latter two should be professional drivers) that indicated to the state standard would be about fifteen percent of the total vehicle traffic seen.
Here’s the link to the NSW legislation: NSW road legislation
You’ll note how many definitions of changing direction there are, including merge lanes, T-section roundabouts, and the like. Head to points 47 and 49. These are the two pieces that the state governments and territories seem to refuse to acknowledge are a root cause of our road toll.
Howso?
Cars are designed and engineered with some basic basics in place, such as where the indicator and washer/wiper stalk are located. Go sit in your car, place your hands at the nine o’clock and three o’clock positions. Stretch your fingers. Those fingertips will reach two stalks in the vast majority of vehicles. One of those, when moved up and down, will engage the indicator system.
Now here’s where it gets tricky….the idea of that lever is pretty simple in concept yet seems to befuddle and confuse the horrifyingly large amount of Aussie drivers. Most will only use it like the countdown to pulling the pin on the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, in that the lights on one side of their car/truck/bus will flash just three times. 
No more. No less. However, when used as per the legislation a miracle occurs, a miracle that may, if our governments and territories can tear their myopic gaze away from the one point one billion dollars of revenue generated by that wonderful driver propelled ATM, speeding fines, go some way to increasing driver engagement with the knock-on effect of drivers being more aware and therefore less likely to crash and die.
Indicators flash more than three times. Car makers need to change that to five, at least.
This has the drivers around being made more aware of what the driver indicating has in mind and therefore a higher level of probability they’ll stay away from that vehicle. And by being more engaged in driving that driver may notice the car sneaking up on their left or right, the truck driver slowing down in front, the mini-bus about to exit a petrol station, and have more time to do the right thing.
But while our pollies feel that speeding is the sole cause of fatalities and ignore asking our boys and girls in blue to enforce the basics of driving, our fatalities and injuries list will continue to disimprove.
The hand grenade is in your hands.
Goldilocks Goodyear* And The Three Tyre Pressure Bears
Getting the tyre pressure right is a bit of a Goldilocks process – it can’t be too hard or too soft, but has to be just right. If you don’t get it right, it could result in an accident that leaves you looking like you have indeed had an encounter with three grouchy, hungry grizzly bears. Or it could turn your vehicle into a beast with one heck of an appetite for fuel. (On a complete sidetrack, wouldn’t Ursus or the word for Bear in some other language make a great name for a 4×4?)
The most common scenario is that you end up with Mama Bear’s tyres: too soft. This is because valves aren’t perfect and slow leaks happen over time, what with little air molecules being sneaky. Ideally, we ought to check our tyre pressure monthly but not many of us actually do this (and that’s me at the front of the queue for the confessional!).
The problem with too-soft Mama Bear tyres is that they bulge out. This leads to two problems. Firstly, because the walls of the tyre weren’t designed to balloon out like that, you’re increasing the chance of the tyre going boom on you. Yes – underinflation and being too soft is what increases the chance of getting a blowout, not being too hard.
The second problem of having too-soft Mama Bear tyres that bulge out is because this increases the area of tyre contacting the road. A moment’s thought will tell you that this has to be better for grip, right? Well, yes. It does increase the amount of grip between the tyre and the road surface, and that’s just the problem. This means increased friction, and this means that your car has to work harder to get up to the speed you want to. Remember what it was like when you were a kid and your bike tyre started getting a leak so you had to pedal that much harder when the tyre was flat? Well, the same thing happens when your car tyres are flat (or your trailer tyres for that matter). What this adds up to is terrible, terrible fuel economy. If you’ve wondered why you don’t get the same fuel economy as the stats in the car ads say you should, this is one of the reasons why (the other reasons are because the vehicles are tested minus any load at all and in the lab where there’s no crosswinds or headwinds).
OK, so having the tyres too soft is a bad thing. However, is there such a thing as being too hard?
As Goldilocks would tell us, yes, tyres can be too hard. Papa Bear tyres might not increase your chance of a blowout the same way that Mama Bear tyres do, in spite of what the cartoons tell us. Papa Bear tyres are dangerous in another way. Because they make the bottom of the tyre narrower and more convex, there’s less of the tyre touching the road. This means less friction.
Less friction, of course, means less grip around corners and greatly increased braking time. If it’s wet, then proportionally less water can be channelled out of the way, so the friction decreases even further. Let’s stop and think about the implications of that for a moment, but not for too long. The results certainly won’t be pretty, especially if speed is involved. It’s a wonder that the cops don’t have random tyre pressure checks the same way they do random breath testing and random speed checks. Oops, maybe I shouldn’t have written that – I might give them new ideas and new ways to milk our wallets.
So how do you get those nice Baby Bear tyres that aren’t too hard or too soft but just right, where you’ve got enough friction to make the car handle well but not so much that your car guzzles petrol?
The answer, of course, is to check your tyre pressure regularly. Some say that you should even check the pressure every time you fill up with fuel, but this may be going a bit too far. Maybe. Most modern vehicles are very, very nice to us and have tyre pressure monitors installed and provide us with an alert when the pressure strays out of the Goldilocks Zone.
OK, so how do you know what pressure you should inflate your tyres to? The answer to that is usually provided very kindly by the car manufacturers, either in the owner’s manual or on the door pillars (either on the driver’s or the passenger’s side). In my Volvo S70, the info is in the manual. In my Nissan Terrano, the information is on a sticker on the door pillar on the driver’s side… unfortunately in Japanese where it hasn’t totally faded away. Curses and naught words! Fortunately in situations like this, you can use online tools and good old Google to help you out (here’s one possibility: http://www.tyre-pressures.com/).
Tyre pressure, like porridge, can’t be taken too hot. However, there is no such thing as too cold when it comes to measuring tyre pressure. This is because heat makes the rubber a bit softer and the air inside take up a wee bit more space.
When you check the tyre pressure, you need to be sure that you use the right units. Car tyre pressure is one of the few things that we still like to think about in Imperial units rather than metric (the others are height and the birth weight of babies). The Imperial unit is pounds per square inch (psi) but the metric equivalent is kiloPascals (kPA). The conversion formula is 1 psi = 6.8947 kPA, so if you use the wrong unit, you’ll either be underinflated or overinflated by sixfold.
Of course, getting Baby Bear tyres isn’t as simple as that. If you’ve got a heavier than normal load in your vehicle, this will press down on the tyres so they bulge out and get a Mama Bear tyre profile and will therefore act like a Mama Bear tyre. This really adds up to a beast with a big appetite, as the engine doesn’t just have to cope with the extra load, it also has to cope with the extra friction if you don’t increase the tyre pressure. And don’t forget to make like Johnny Farnham and take the pressure down once you’ve dropped off the load! Oh yes – and make sure that your tyres aren’t too worn or getting the pressure right won’t do diddly-squat.
To make things even more interesting, if you’re into off-roading, you need to adjust the tyre pressure according to the surface you’re driving on. In sand, for example, you need the extra friction, so Mama Bear might be able to help you out if you get stuck.
Catch you later – I’m off to check the tyre pressure in both cars.
* This is not the name of a blonde model in the Goodyear equivalent of the Pirelli calendar.
Level 2, 9 Help Street