Amateurs can only see what's going on? Teaching you to correctly interpret crash test reports

Nowadays, many manufacturers will show their vehicles' safety features, such as various types of high-strength steel and airbags, to emphasize cabin safety. Of course, if that's not enough, more and more driver-assistance features are appearing on the vehicle's options list as technology advances.

However, these features can actually play a big role, you need to rely on some professional test standards to judge, so there is a safety crash test we are familiar with today. Just recently, a foreign media also selected the best ten models in the European E-NCAP test, in which the recent hot Tesla Model?3 surprisingly, and without surprise, occupied the first place on the list. However, for the average consumer, most people don't have a clear idea of how safety crash tests are conducted and what perspective they should use to interpret the report. So near the end of last year, the "China Insurance Automobile Safety Index (C-IASI)" accidentally hit the microblogging hot search.

How do you interpret a crash test report?

When it comes to automobile crash tests, the most famous one in China is undoubtedly C-NCAP, which was born out of the NCAP system, the world's most mainstream crash test system was first born in the U.S. NHTSA (U.S. Highway Traffic Safety Administration), and it is the most important collision reference index in Europe, Japan and other countries and regions. Since its birth in 2006, C-NCAP has become one of the most important references for vehicle safety when we buy a car. Meanwhile, China Automotive Research Institute (CARI), which is responsible for the operation of C-NCAP, is also the developer of many national standards in the automotive industry. In the past few years, as OEMs have gradually adapted to the rules of C-NCAP, the crash results of new cars in C-NCAP have been getting better and better.

Meanwhile, the C-NCAP standard is also evolving with the times, and will be upgraded every three years, such as the standard introduced in 2018, which is called by many industry insiders as the most stringent C-NCAP in history, and many of the standards have already exceeded the difficulty of the E-NCAP, such as the weight of side-impact dolly has been increased from 950kg to 1,400kg, with a 47.7% increase in the strength of the corresponding crash test. Strength increased by 47.7%; taking into account the increasing proportion of SUVs in the domestic market, the height of the lowest end of the dolly off the ground was increased from 300mm to 350mm, which is 50mm higher than that of the European test dolly, thus increasing the difficulty of the crash test. In addition, the crash speed of the whiplash test was increased from 16km/h to 20km/h, increasing the crash intensity by 56.3%.

Compared with the huge NCAP family, the "CIRI" (CIRI?Auto?Technology?Institute, abbreviated as "CIRI"), which is known as "China Insurance Research Institute" (abbreviated as "CIRI" in English), is the only company that can provide crash tests for the NCAP family. "CIRI") can be regarded as a "newcomer" in China's automotive crash test industry, which was launched in 2018, "under the tutelage" of the U.S. IIHS, another major crash test organization. CIRI, launched in 2018, is a "newcomer" in China's automobile crash test industry, and is "under the tutelage" of the United States' IIHS, another major crash test organization. Although it is a "newcomer", but its ability to "make things happen" can be said to be quite large, in the past, C-NCAP test to obtain four or even five-star models, in the C-IASI crash test that China Insurance Automobile Safety Index (C-IASI) may not be It is M (general). So what's the problem? Is the C-NCAP five-star crash model I got really unsafe?

It all starts with the different test standards.

Different application scenarios give rise to different standards

The frontal 25% offset crash test simulates a vehicle at high speed (64km/h) where the left corner of the vehicle strikes a fixed object, similar to the six ring road in Beijing in China at a speed of 64km/h, the driver's side impacts a barrier

In the frontal collision test, the C-NCAP was conducted at 50km/h and 64km/h respectively.

In the frontal crash test, C-NCAP conducted a 50km/h full frontal collision test and a 64km/h frontal 40% collision test respectively, while in the C-IASI, the overlap between the test car and the barrier was only 25%, with the speed of the car basically being the same, at 64.4km/h.

However, the application scenarios of the two tests are not exactly the same. In the C-NCAP crash test, the simulation is the more common daily frontal collision with other vehicles, so it is designed with an aluminum buffer material at the front of the barrier, which can absorb the force of the collision to a certain extent. The frontal 25% offset collision test in the C-IASI crash test targets trees and utility poles in the opposite lane, or the highway's center guardrail for single-vehicle accidents, as well as a very small portion of two-vehicle front-end corner collisions.

And it's in that 25 percent offset crash crash test that the rating differences come out. Back in 2012, the IIHS released its first frontal 25% offset crash, and most of the 12 models that participated in the test performed poorly, including the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Audi A4, and Lexus ES/IS, all of which received a "P" rating, with only three models receiving a Only three models received "G" and "A" ratings. What is happening in China today is like a replica of what happened in the U.S. in 2012, with many popular models "flopping" in the C-IASI test. And so it's become a hot topic of concern.

Whiplash test and roof hydrostatic test are more important for safety

But while people focus all their attention on the 25 percent offset crash results, they overlook many other details, such as the seat test (also known as the whiplash test), which is more relevant to us, and the roof hydrostatic test. Knowing that rear-end accidents are one of the most common accidents in our daily lives, protecting the occupants' necks is far more important than we think, which is why in highly competitive car races, drivers are mandated to wear HANS to protect their cervical vertebrae from accidents due to violent impacts. In addition, rollover accidents cause more than 10 percent of all occupant fatalities, the highest of all traffic accidents. Stronger roofs reduce the risk, making roof hydrostatic testing far more important than 25 percent of offset crashes.

We need a standard for China more than anything else

There is some controversy in the industry over the 25 percent frontal offset crash test from the IIHS.

From the history of the IIHS, since its inception, it has set up frontal-offset, side-impact, roof-strength, and rear-end impact on the neck tests, which have undoubtedly played a big role in improving vehicle safety. Statistics show that, thanks to improvements in vehicle safety technology, the driver fatality rate in frontal collisions involving vehicles less than three years old has been reduced by 55% since 2001. However, at that time, the number of deaths in frontal crashes in the United States still exceeded 10,000 per year, and the main contributor to these tragedies was small-overlap crashes, which is why the IIHS added a 25 percent overlap crash test. The main reason for the frequency of small-overlap crashes also includes the special traffic conditions in the United States.

In the United States, in addition to Manhattan, Los Angeles, such as the main city, the vast majority of the region's roads are very straight and spacious, including pedestrians and non-motorized and other road traffic participants, the speed of the car in the unknowingly also went up. In addition, many roads in the United States are open roads, i.e., there are no barriers in the middle or on either side of the road, which also increases the likelihood of fatal traffic accidents.

Since then, the 25% offset collision has almost become a "specialty" of the U.S. auto industry, and even E-NCAP, which has always been the most comprehensive test program, has not followed suit. The reason for this is the huge difference between European road conditions and those in the United States. In most European cities, narrow streets and congested roads allow vehicles to drive at lower speeds in most cases, while closed highways can reduce the number of accidents even without speed limits.

According to a survey report from China's Committee for In-depth Study of Traffic Accidents (CIDAS), 25 percent of all traffic accidents in China are offset collisions, accounting for only about 8 percent of all traffic accidents. In addition, similar to the road conditions in Europe, China's urban roads are also narrow, and there are more pedestrians, non-motorized vehicles and other road traffic participants on the road, similar to the road conditions in Japan. In this case, low-speed collision, pedestrian safety protection and other related tests are actually much more important than the 25% offset collision.

Of course, the current domestic safety collision is still not comprehensive enough, and there are still no side column collisions, braking distance tests, or child safety protection programs. In the future, only under the constraints of a more suitable crash standard for China, car companies will be able to target, and China's automotive products will be able to better protect the safety of every traffic participant.

At the same time, technological advances have led to advances in automotive safety design, and crash tests have provided us with a better basis for protection. However, the safety of the car itself is the last line of defense, and the most secure, is still to plan a good travel route, improve safety awareness, do safe driving, only safe driving habits is the biggest guarantee of safe travel.

Written in the last

In fact, whether it is a letter C-NCAP or C-IASI, are far better than to believe that those online so-called "real collision cases" concluded. For example, "Japanese cars are not safe" and "XX is a road tank", etc. The creators of these contents often lack professional common sense. However, the limitations of the test do not represent the safety of a car, not to mention the attitude of a car company towards safety. A rational assessment of a car's safety from a more representative review program is the most important thing - after all, safety needs to be considered in the context of actual local traffic conditions.

This article was written by the author of AutoNavi, and does not represent the views of AutoNavi.