Tag Archives: sideimpact

How Much Safer are Vehicles that Pass the Updated IIHS Side Impact Test?

Side impact crashes are the most deadly per mph of impact speed; we need better tests to better evaluate our risks.
Side impact crashes are the most deadly per mph of impact speed; we need better tests to better evaluate our risks.

A few years ago, I wrote about how the IIHS had begun to design a replacement side impact test to address some of the shortcomings I’d identified in the original test. In particular, I hypothesized that the IIHS’ threshold for a “good” level of structural impact resistance–at least 12.5 cm of space between the B-pillar and the centerline of the driver’s seat after impact with a 3300 lb barrier traveling at 31 mph–was not enough to keep occupants safe. I based my hypothesis on the various case studies I’d profiled involving frontal and side impacts as well as on calculations of kinetic energy changes across impact speeds (for example, the fact that a head-on crash at 55 mph is the equivalent of being pushed out of the 10th floor of a building).

My theories led me to write a range of articles illustrating the leaders in side impact resistance across vehicular classes, from small- and mid-sized cars to station wagons to minivans to SUVs. As the years progressed, the centerline distance increased with each generation of vehicles tested by the IIHS, reflecting improvements in engineering in new vehicles throughout the country and greater attention paid to side impact safety. I’m happy to say that the day has arrived!

The IIHS modified their side impact test in late 2021 as they acknowledged that high speed side impact crashes still caused a significant number of fatalities in vehicles with “good” side impact scores. What were the changes, and how much of a difference are they likely to make? We’ll take a dive into these questions below, and as usual, the emphasis will be on best practices, and not simply on a blind trust that institutional standards are good enough, because as we’ve learned through decades of public health failures (leaded gasoline, CFCs, asbestos, auto safety, opioids, climate change, and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic), institutional standards are almost never where they need to be.

What changes did the IIHS make to their side impact crash test?

The main changes the IIHS made to the side impact protocol involved barrier mass, velocity, height, and contact surface. Two of these changes were good. Two of these changes were not necessarily good ones.

The barrier mass change was a good one; the weight was increased from 3,300 pounds, or that of a mid-sized car or small SUV, to 4,200 pounds, or that of a large car, mid-sized SUV, or minivan.

The velocity change was a good one; the barrier contact speed was increased from 31 mph to 37 mph.

The contact surface change was not a good one in my books. Per the IIHS; it was softened in order to permit it to bend around the B-pillar in order to compromise occupant space by the front and rear doors despite the presence of a strong B pillar. However, when discussing the limitations of the original side impact test, the IIHS also directly admitted that in real-world crashes, vehicles of a given weight produced more damage due to less forgiving (read: stiffer) fronts than the deformable barrier, which acted somewhat like a pillow when impacting the tested vehicles.

The increased danger of rigid barriers is highlighted well in the NHTSA side pole test, in which a vehicle is driven sideways at a 75 degree angle and at 20 mph into a rigid pole 10 inches in diameter; this is designed to simulate a telephone pole or tree strike.  While the IIHS claims that their original and side tests result in more damage than this test, I completely disagree, and find both tests complement each other. The NHTSA test is a frightening one, as the intrusion is tremendous despite the relatively low speed; it is easy to see how such a crash could and would result in fatal cranial trauma despite the low speeds, and it provides all the evidence necessary that rigid barriers, pound for pound, are far more threatening than deformable ones.

Similarly, the height change was not a good one in my books. The IIHS lowered the height of the barrier under the argument that a lower barrier would better replicate the damage of an SUV strike than that of the prior barrier. I’m not a fan of it because it reduces strain on the B pillar and threats to driver’s heads (as represented by HIC-15 forces) by concentrating striking forces closer to the ground where the vehicle is stronger, rather than toward the cabin, where everything we value is located.

How do IIHS side impact crash test changes translate to real world safety differences?

This is where things get interesting; we’ve seen the science, but now we need the engineering. When I wrote about the limitations of the original IIHS side impact test, my wish list included a 4,000 pound barrier and a 40 mph impact speed. I got a little of both; the barrier mass exceeded my expectations but the impact speed fell below them. Unfortunately for us, the impact speed matters more. Let’s look at the math.

To calculate the test forces, we’ll use kinetic energy = 1 / 2 * mass * velocity * velocity.

The original test featured k = .5 * 1497 kg * 13.9 m/s * 13.9 m/s, or 143.7 kJ, or kilojoules of energy.

Per the IIHS, real world studies indicate that drivers of vehicles with “good” scores on the original test are 70% less likely to die from direct side impacts vs drivers of “poor”-rated vehicles. This advantage drops to 64% with “acceptable” vehicles and 49% with “marginal” vehicles. These are, frankly speaking, great advantages. But where are we going now?

My wish list test of 4,000 pounds and 40 mph results in 290.1 kJ. This is 202% as much force as that in the original IIHS test, or 102% more.

The new IIHS test at 4,200 pounds and 37 mph results in 260.6 kJ. This is 181% as much force as that in the original IIHS test, or 81% more. The IIHS lists it as 82% more, so we’re in the same range.

However, notice the difference between my wish list and their revision: although they added more weight than I was hoping for, the fact that they only boosted speed by 6 mph instead of my 9 mph to hit an even 40 mph means a test that’s significantly less impactful, if you’ll excuse the pun. As we’ve discussed over and over and over again, speed matters more than almost anything else. A 4,000 pound vehicle traveling at 40 mph will do significantly more damage than a 4,200 pound vehicle traveling at 37 mph.

That said, it’s still worth celebrating that the IIHS is using a test that’s more reflective of real world crashes. It is significant (and disappointing), however, that they chose a lower speed to give car manufacturers an easier time to meet the new standard instead of pushing them to do more and save more lives by putting more effort into high end engineering. Forty miles per hour is a natural testing speed upgrade; it’s what the IIHS uses universally in frontal crashes. The main reason to avoid using such a speed in side crashes is because it’s much harder to engineer a vehicle that will let you walk away from a 40 mph side impact than it is to engineer one that will do the same with a 40 mph frontal crash, as there is far less space between the driver and the barrier in a side impact crash than there is in a frontal crash.

Is it worth buying a vehicle tested under the new standard if I already have a “good” vehicle under the old side impact test?

This is perhaps the most difficult question of all to answer. It really depends on your risk tolerances and budget. Personally, if I had a vehicle that already tested well on the original IIHS test, I would not rush to upgrade in order to get the newer technology. It’s absolutely an improvement, but if you’ve got a vehicle with “good” scores on the old test, you almost certainly have a vehicle that has the other essential elements in vehicular safety: good frontal scores and ESC. If you’ve got these, your vehicle is good enough, and you’ll get far more out of focusing on how you’re driving and on where you’re driving. These are the main factors in whether or not you make it home, especially once you have a decent vehicle.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

IIHS Acknowledges Side Impact Test Limitations Identified Years Earlier on CCD

Side impact crashes are often fatal. We need more realistic tests to design more resistant cars.

One of the most consistent messages I’ve tried to share on the CCD since its creation has been for the need to identify best practices and execute them without waiting for institutions to acknowledge them. This is a song and dance we see time and time again, such as in our national approach to car seat safety. The American Association of Pediatrics most recently recommended in 2011 rear-facing children until the age of 2, marking a major increase over the 2002 recommendation of doing so until 1. The problem, of course, is that best practices as outlined in Sweden recommend rear-facing until 4 or 5, and have done so for more than 40 years. In other words, our latest policies in car seat safety are still behind where the Swedes were 40 years ago. This, incidentally, is a major part of why we continue to lose about 5 children to auto trauma in the US for each child lost in Sweden. To follow best practices, you can’t wait for your government to learn they exist, never mind to put them into law. Unfortunately, the knowledge and enforcement falls on you. Let’s look at how this applies today to an area of interest of mine: side impact collisions.

Vehicular safety is only a third of the road safety picture, but it’s still worth talking about

The scene is no different when it comes to vehicular safety. Even though it’s only one third of what actually matters in road-related best practices (along with driving behaviors and road infrastructure, which make far more of a difference than vehicular design), it’s still significant. We know that of the three main types of multi-vehicle collisions–frontal, side, and rear–that side impacts have the most severity and are the most likely, crash for crash, to result in fatalities. This is why nearly every article I’ve written on vehicular safety in multi-vehicle contexts has had to do with the vehicles that have tested best in side impact crash mitigation. The theory I developed some years ago was that, while the IIHS’ threshold for a “good” level of structural impact resistance–at least 12.5 cm of space between the B-pillar and the centerline of the driver’s seat after impact with a 3300 lb barrier traveling at 31 mph–was acceptable, it wasn’t enough. I wrote article after article illustrating the leaders in side impact resistance across vehicular classes, from small- and mid-sized cars to station wagons to minivans to SUVs. Here they are below:

My theories were based on the crashes I’d studied involving side and frontal impacts as well as an understanding of the dramatic increases in kinetic energy present with slightly higher impact speeds (which we’ve also discussed extensively throughout the blog).

What did the IIHS learn about their side impact test?

This is where the IIHS comes in. They noticed (as has anyone paying any amount of attention to crash statistics) that people continue to die in side impact collisions despite increasing market penetration of well-scoring vehicles. While cohesive, long-term solutions would not solely focus on strengthening vehicles but on producing safer drivers and roads that prevented or reduced the risks of side impact collisions, the IIHS, by design, focuses nearly exclusively on vehicle design. On one hand, this severely limits their effectiveness. On the other, every bit of the puzzle helps. This, by the way, is one of the many reasons why it’s so important for them to not hide internal crash data any more than they already do. Here’s what they found:

IIHS researchers conducted another study of real-world side crashes. This time they examined how well each of the test measurements that feed into the ratings correlates with death risk.

The study included 1999-2016 model year passenger vehicles with standard head-protecting side airbags that had been rated by IIHS for side protection. The researchers looked at the rate of driver deaths per left-side crashes for each model. They compared these rates with 10 specific intrusion and dummy injury measures that go into the ratings, finding that each one was correlated with driver death risk in left-side crashes.

For example, the authors estimated that each additional centimeter of B-pillar intrusion was associated with a 3 percent increase in death risk. Each additional millimeter of rib deflection, one of the measures recorded by the dummies in the test, was associated with a 1 percent increase in death risk.

The key part is in blue above. The researchers were simply interested in the validity of the test itself–whether the measures the ratings were based on were related to real-world death risks. They were, but in particular,they also found direct correlations between tested side impact intrusion and risks of death in real-world crashes.

We came to this conclusion several years ago–lower intrusion, greater survival

The annual CCD budget is much smaller than that of the IIHS, as I don’t have an army of insurance companies funding my work. If I did, I’d focus far more on best practices while leaning on the shoulders of giants–Swedish and otherwise–instead of on retesting policies and practices leaders in the field established years ago. However, we are where we are, and the good news is that the IIHS is planning on designing a more stringent test for manufacturers. It’s just worth noting that, as is often the case, you can’t wait for corporations to come to logical conclusions related to public safety and health: if you’ve got access to better information or the ability to generate such information on your own, use it. Share it. By the time the corporations come to the same conclusions, you’ll be around to enjoy them, and more importantly, you’ll have improved the quality of life for a number of people you may never meet but with whom you share this great big world.

What will the IIHS and car manufacturers learn from the new test?

Here’s a look into the future:

If the test is meaningful, most vehicles will fare poorly at first, because it will reflect a more realistic crash environment–the one that leads to all the real world deaths in vehicles with currently good side impact scores. If the test is not meaningful, most vehicles will do well, and we will learn nothing.

This isn’t school. The fact that vehicles pass with flying colors from the start is meaningless if people continue to die in massive numbers. A meaningful test will need to be one that simulates real world conditions. I’d personally like to see a test speed of at least 40 mph–the same speed used in their frontal collision tests–and a vehicular mass of at least 4,000 pounds, which is far more representative of the average SUV, minivan, or pickup on the road than 3,300. They note themselves in a related study that the average 2019 model year SUV weight was 4,200 pounds, which they used in a small series of tests to see if there were differences in how vehicles responded when impacted by real vehicles compared to when they were hit by the test deformable barrier. Incidentally, they discovered there that real vehicles of a given weight produced more damage due to less forgiving (read: stiffer) fronts than the deformable barrier, which acted somewhat like a pillow when impacting the tested vehicles. Clearly, they have more work to do. But the key point to take home regarding the redesigned test is that if it doesn’t represent the types of crashes I write about on the CCD–those at highway speeds with heavy vehicles–it isn’t going to teach us anything or lead to safer vehicles.

Does this mean I need a vehicle that shows up on your lists, Mike?

No, no, no.

Such vehicles are ideal if you can get them, but in the end, this still isn’t what makes the lion’s share of difference in whether you’ll make it home to your loved ones each night. Focus on your driving–how you do it and where you do it. That’s where up to 90% of the results will come from. What you’re driving may make up the last 10%, and I think that’s generous. Remember–in a 70 mph head on collision (whether with another vehicle or with a bridge or home-like barrier), you’re facing 306%, or more than 3 times, the force that your vehicle was designed to protect you from ((70)^2/(40)^2). Statistically speaking, everyone in your car, minivan, SUV, or pickup is going to die. I’ll repeat that once more because it’s such a key point to remember.

No matter what you drive, you won’t survive past a certain collision speed

That speed will vary with a number of factors, but it’s almost always going to be hit by the time you reach 70 mph. It’s often hit at far lower speeds, like at 55 mph. Remember, that’s as severe of a crash as being pushed off a 10th floor parking garage while strapped into your car.

Learn, then follow best practices. Everything else is fluff.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

Side Impact Safety: Volkswagen Atlas Safest SUV of 2018

The 2018 Volkswagen Atlas might be the safest SUV ever made (to date) if you want to survive getting t-boned.
The 2018 Volkswagen Atlas might be the safest SUV ever made (to date) if you want to survive getting t-boned.

Side impact safety is one of those elements of car safety that you have relatively little control over. Yes, you can avoid roads with the potential for high-speed t-bones, but aside from reducing the number of annual miles you put on your vehicle (the single most effective driving strategy you can master), the design of your vehicle is probably one of the best areas you can invest in for reducing your risk of this kind of crash. So what’s a good vehicle to be in if a side impact is imminent?

Last month, I wrote about how the 2018 Honda Odyssey had regained the title of the safest minivan to be in when it came to surviving a side impact. I’ve got plenty of articles here on previous rankings for SUVs, minivans, and cars of various sizes. Today we’re going to revisit rankings for 2017-2018 model year SUVs, and as a spoiler, a $30,000 7-seater–the Volkswagen Atlas–is at the top of the heap.

How structural integrity (crush distance) serves as a proxy for side impact resistance

This is the 2018 Atlas after being hit by a deformable barrier in the NHTSA's side impact crash test, but the general principles are the same.
This is the 2018 Atlas after being hit by a deformable barrier in the NHTSA’s side impact crash test, but the general principles are the same.

The IIHS’ side impact test resembles the NHTSA’s test, which is based on the NCAP test used around the world. Essentially, the IIHS rams a 3,300 barrier (it represents an SUV of equivalent height, size, and mass, such as a Honda CR-V) into the side of a vehicle at 31 mph, which delivers, per kinetic energy calculators, 143.7 kilojoules of energy. Every vehicle bends somewhat due to such an impact at the B-pillar (the pillar between the front and back doors), and an IIHS sub-score called the “structure and safety cage” tells us how much the B-pillar bent into the center of the driver’s seat at the peak of the collision. The less deformation as measured by increased distance between the driver’s seat center and the B-pillar, the better. It’s kind of like measuring how close you came to being hit in the head by your child swinging a tennis racket, except the racket is a vehicle being driven into your car. We’ll use this metric to rank the top SUVs on the market.

I researched the test scores of every SUV currently available in the US to curate this list, and it’s accurate as of November 2017, with images sourced from the CCD, Wikipedia, or the NHTSA. The 2017 list of safest SUVs and crossovers for side impact survival is here.

The Six Safest SUVs for Surviving Side Impact Collisions in 2018

32 cm – 2018 Volkswagen Atlas.

The newly released Volkswagen Atlas is an impressive engineering feat. Designed as a larger, more American-sized version of the Touareg (which has since been discontinued for the US market), the Atlas competes with a range of mid-priced family 3-row SUVs like the Honda Pilot, Toyota Highlander or Sequoia, Chevy Tahoe or Traverse, Ford Explorer, and Dodge Durango, but beats all of them along with a range of luxury 3-row SUVs like the Audi Q7 and Volvo XC90 with a never-before-seen 32 cm of side impact resistance. That’s more than a full foot of protection relative to the center of the driver’s seat.

Imagine someone driving a Honda CR-V or Ford Escape at you at your driver’s door at 31 mph and having it bounce away from you while leaving a foot of space between it and the center of your seat. That is nothing short of amazing. Volkswagen has done some very naughty things in recent years, but presuming these results are real, they’re setting the standard for everyone else to follow, and the Atlas is a fine mapmaker in that regard. No other car, minivan, SUV, or pickup truck exceeds it (so far).

My list of infant, convertible, and booster seats that will fit 3 across in the Atlas is available here.

27.5 cm – 2017-2018 Audi Q7.

Almost 6 cm behind the Atlas, but still ahead of every other vehicle beside it, comes a stablemate of the Atlas–the Audi Q7. Given that Audi is a subsidiary of VW the way Lexus belongs to Toyota, it’s a testament again to Volkswagen’s engineering to find both the number one and two spots occupied by their SUVs. The Q7 was the safest SUV for side impacts just one year ago when I last compiled this list. It’s likely going to remain on these lists for at least another decade; very few manufacturers are building cars this strong.

My list of infant, convertible, and booster seats that will fit 3 across in the Q7 is available here.

26 cm – 2016-2018 Volvo XC90.

The XC90, which was the leading SUV two short years ago in side impact protection, has fallen to third place, but remains one of the best vehicles to be in during an imminent side impact collision. It’s worth noting that Volvo has yet to address its “acceptable” torso sub-score; that said, the overall strong performance of the XC90 makes up for this shortcoming. The XC90 in its second generation represents a huge step forward from the 9.5 cm of protection offered in the original XC90. That said, it’s important to remember that 9.5 cm was still enough to place the original XC90 and a number of other vehicles mentioned at the end of the article on various IIHS zero driver death rate lists.

My list of infant, convertible, and booster seats that will fit 3 across in the XC90 is available here.

26 cm – 2018 Volvo XC60.

The original XC60 was one of the best SUVs for surviving side impact crashes since its 2010 inception, rounding out the top 6 a full 5 years later in 2015 with its 22 cm of side intrusion protection. Even in 2017, when I last made this list, it rounded up the top 7 SUVs, a full 7 years after its release. That’s good design. The second generation has taken several cm steps forward and is tied for third place with its larger stablemate, the XC90. It is likely to continue to make the top 10 list for another several years into the future.

My list of infant, convertible, and booster seats that will fit 3 across in the XC60 is available here.

25 cm – 2018 Volkswagen Tiguan.

The second generation Tiguan  represents the 3rd and final VW/ Audi superstar on the list. With 25 cm of intrusion protection, it’s another strong showing from the biggest automaker on the planet. It’s worth noting that the Tiguan, having grown significantly in size, is no longer classified by the IIHS as a small SUV, but as a mid-sized SUV.

My list of infant, convertible, and booster seats that will fit 3 across in the Tiguan is available here.

25 cm – 2014-2018 BMW X5.

Rounding up the list and tied with the new Tiguan is the third generation F15 BMW X5. The oldest vehicle on the list, it’s yet another example of the durability of good engineering, at least when it comes to side impact safety. As the X5 is nearing the end of its generation, we’ll have to see if the next gen exceeds it in side impact protection and secures a higher position on next year’s list.

My list of infant, convertible, and booster seats that will fit 3 across in the X5 is available here.

What if I can’t afford (or don’t want to buy) any of these SUVs?

If all of these SUVs are either out of budget or not your cup of tea, never fear. There are a great many others that offered excellent performance but fell just behind the cutoff level I established at 25 cm. For example, the 2016-2018 Mercedes-Benz GLC and the 2011-2015 Mercedes-Benz GLK (which MB would rename a year later as the GLC) are both right on the heels of the X5 and Tiguan at 24 cm. The 2016-2018 Lexus RX is right there with them at 24 cm. Just behind them we find the 2009-2017 Audi Q5, which had 23 cm of protection in an era when most vehicles didn’t offer more than 12 cm.

More broadly, remember that what you’re driving isn’t what primarily determines your family’s safety–not even in side impact collisions. What primarily impacts your safety and that of your loved ones is the degree to which you remember to choose safe speeds, follow best practices with car seats,  and choose safe roads. If you do so, you’ll have much better odds of avoiding and surviving side, frontal, or rear crashes than anyone driving any of the vehicles above, even if you’re in something with only a few cm of side impact protection. Remember that the 2008 Toyota Sienna, the first minivan to appear on an IIHS zero death list 10 model years ago (Status Report Vol. 46, No. 5), had a whopping 8.5-9.5 cm of side intrusion protection. The 2007 Ford Edge, the first family mid-sized SUV to make the zero list, had 9 cm of side impact protection. And the aforementioned original XC90 also came in at 9.5 cm of side impact protection, which, as noted earlier, also landed it on a zero list (Status Report Vol. 50, No. 1).

It’s not the vehicle that makes the difference; it’s how and where you drive it.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. Have a question or want to discuss best practices? Send me an email at carcrashdetective [at] gmail [dot] com.

Side Impact Safety: Honda Odyssey Safest Minivan Again in 2018

The 2018 Odyssey is the safest minivan ever made (so far) when it comes to side impact crash resistance.
The 2018 Odyssey is the safest minivan ever made (so far) when it comes to side impact crash resistance.

I’ve written endlessly about side impact collisions and how dangerous they can be for all of us who travel in passenger-sized vehicles. They are overrepresented in fatal crash scenarios, and have been so for years in every country with modern infrastructure. As illustrated in an earlier post on fatality rates in side impact collisions, even though only 21% of all collisions feature side impacts, 34% of fatal multiple-vehicle collisions involve side impacts, compared to frontal impacts, which make up 52% of all collisions and 56% of fatal multi-vehicle collisions, and rear impacts, which make up 28% of all collisions and only 8% of fatal multiple-vehicle crashes. To put it simply, despite side impacts being the least common type of crash, they’re proportionally the most likely to be deadly. So what can we do about them?

Which factors affect your odds of dying in a side impact collision?

No matter where you live, there are three primary factors in auto safety: how you drive, what you drive, and where you drive. You can reduce your odds of dying in a side impact collision by increasing your driving safety–e.g., avoiding driving entirely, limiting annual miles driven, following the speed limit, and so on. You can also improve your odds of survival by monitoring where you drive–e.g., on divided vs. undivided roads, or in areas with lower speed limits, speed and traffic cameras, and forgiving roads. However, today we’ll look at how to increase your odds of avoiding and surviving side impact crashes by changing what you drive–specifically by choosing the minivans with the greatest levels of side impact resistance available in 2018.

Structural integrity (crush distance) as a metric for side impact resistance

This is the 2018 Odyssey after an NHTSA crash test, but the principles behind the test are similar to that of the IIHS.
This is the 2018 Odyssey after an NHTSA crash test, but the principles behind the test are similar to that of the IIHS.

I’ve written about the IIHS’ side impact test in detail in previous posts on surviving side impact crashes in cars, minivans, and SUVs, but here’s the short version: the IIHS has a side impact test that involves ramming a 3,300 lb barrier (with the same height and size profile of an equivalent-weight SUV) into a vehicle’s side at 31 mph, delivering 143.7KJ of kinetic energy. This deforms every vehicle to some degree at the B-pillar, and the IIHS’ subscore called the “structure and safety cage” measures how deeply the B-pillar intrudes into the center of the driver’s seat during the collision. The less it does, as reflected by increased distance between the B-pillar and the center of the driver’s seat, the better. We’ll use this metric to rank the minivans on the market.

I combed through test scores of every minivan currently sold in the US to make this list, and it’s accurate as of mid October 2017, with images sourced from yours truly, Wikipedia, or the NHTSA. The 2016 minivan side impact review is here.

The 5 safest minivans for surviving side impact collisions in 2018

21.5 cm – 2018 Honda Odyssey.

The newest version of the Honda Odyssey looks, feels, and drives very similarly to the prior generation; it speaks to the strong foundation established in the model that preceded it. The most significant change in side impact protection is a slight increase in door and frame strength leading to a B-pillar distance of 21.5 cm from the center of the driver’s seat.

19.5 cm – 2017 Chrysler Pacifica.

2017-pacifica-selfThe last time I wrote a side impact comparison of minivans available in the US and Canadian market, the Chrysler Pacifica had just come onto the scene and pushed the Odyssey out of first place for the first time since 2010, when the Sienna led with 8.5 cm. Chrysler brought their A-game to the Pacifica, and I was happy to see a significant challenger to the Odyssey’s 6-year reign from 2011-2016. However, with the new Odyssey, the Pacifica has slipped into second place, which is still very respectable. The difference between it and the first place ’18 Odyssey is a scant 2 cm.

18.5 cm – 2011-2017 Honda Odyssey.

odyssey-2011-publicdomainIf the Pacifica receives credit for coming in only 2 cm behind the current Odyssey, the previous Odyssey deserves heaps of credit for having a 6-year old design (dating back to 2011) that falls only 1 cm short of a minivan more than half a decade newer (the current Pacifica) and 3 cm short of the current leader, which is the current Odyssey. The 2011+ Odyssey currently represents the sweet spot for side impact safety among used minivans, and its value is hard to beat. This van also had a driver death rate of 8 for the ’11-’14 model years per the most recent IIHS survey.

14.5 cm – 2015-2017 Kia Sedona.

sedona - 2015 - publicdomainThe Sedona is several cm behind the previous gen Odyssey and even farther behind the current Odyssey, but it still provides a solid 14.5 cm of side impact resistance at the B-pillar. Not enough have been sold to show up in any IIHS driver death rate surveys, but the previous generation Sedona was one of the best performing minivans of its generation, and it’s likely that the current generation Sedona will rank as well as the perennial chart-toppers, the Sienna and the Odyssey, once it sells enough models in the current generation.

14-15.5 cm – 2011-2017 Toyota Sienna.

sienna--publicdomainFinally, the Sienna rounds up the list of recent-model year minivans worth purchasing for side impact safety. At 14 cm of side impact resistance, it slots right behind the Sedona. A different test by Toyota gave it 15.5 cm, but I always rank via the lower score, as it’s the more conservative value. It’s worth keeping in mind that although the Sienna has less side impact resistance on paper than the equivalent 2011-2017 Odyssey, both vehicles have statistically identical driver death rates per the most recent IIHS driver death rate, showing again that how and where vehicles are driven has far more of an effect on driver safety than what vehicles are driven, even though both vehicles are nearly identical in on-paper safety to begin with.

What about the Quest, Town & Country, and Grand Caravan?

There are several minivans that didn’t make the list because they’re so far behind the aforementioned minivans that I wouldn’t consider them if I had the choice. The Quest, Town & Country, and Grand Caravan continue to come in last position, just as they did when I last wrote this article. The Pacifica clearly shows  Fiat Chrysler America can make a class-leading minivan when they decide to; they have not yet decided to with either the T&C or with the GC, both of which don’t score any better in side impact resistance in 2017 than the 2006 Toyota Sienna made *11*  years earlier.

What if I can’t afford any of these vans?

Remember that no matter what you’re driving, and whether your van appears on this list or not, the majority of your family’s safety won’t depend in majority on your minivan (or SUV, or car, or pickup truck). It will depend on the degree to which you consistently choose safe speeds, follow best practices with car seats,  and choose safe roads. These are the factors that have the greatest impact on whether you can avoid and survive car crashes, no matter whether you’re in a 2018 Odyssey, a 2006 Sienna, or anything in between.

—

If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

Cara Klemm, 31, Killed in WI Crash; Three Sons 6, 4, and 1 Survive

Who

Cara Klemm, 31 of Brillion, Wisconsin, was killed in a collision while driving what appears to have been a  red 2009-2014 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen.

The collision occurred with an unnamed male driver from Gillett who was driving a dump truck on Thursday, April 6th, 2017 at around 10 AM. The collision occurred at the intersection of Highway32/ 57 and Country Road Z / Hill Road in Holland in Brown County, Wisconsin. Cara died at the scene. The dump truck driver survived and was treated at the scene for minor injuries. Cara’s 3 children, Wyatt, 6; Wesley, 4;  and Wesley, 1 also survived with mild injuries. Aside from her children, Cara is survived by her husband, the father of the three boys.

How

Per reports from ABC 2 WBAY, Cara was eastbound on County Z and did not stop at a stop sign. The Jetta was hit in the front by a southbound dump truck described by the Brown County Sheriff’s office as “fully loaded”; the crash appears to have occurred at the intersection.

Per Lt. John Bain from the Sheriff’s Office, neither alcohol nor drugs appeared to be factors in the crash. Cara died at the scene while her sons, who were in car seats, were mildly injured. The dump truck driver was treated at the scene. An image of the vehicle in storage after the crash is available here while video of the vehicle is available here. Investigators later stated she had no chance of survival due to the primary impact occurring just forward of the driver’s seat. However, they noted that the three car seats in the back seat were virtually untouched. Captain Dan Sanberg, one of the first responders from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office described the seats as age appropriate and credited them with helping hte children survive with minor injuries. Per Kimberly Hess from the Center for Childhood Safety’s description, the 1-year old was rear-facing.

After the crash, Cara’s husband, Teddy Klemm, credited his wife’s proper use of car seats for saving their sons’ lives. He then went on to plead with other parents to properly restrain their children in car seats whenever they traveled. He noted how he was always lazy and would simply let her strap them in, but how she would always make sure seats were anchored with tightly strapped harnesses. Teddy noted that Wyatt had two black eyes likely from hitting the front vehicle seat with his face, but did not have additional injuries. Wesley, who was sitting behind his mother in a high-back booster, apparently received a slight cut above his eye. Wiley received a few scratches on the top of his head, but was otherwise perfectly fine.

“It was kind of hard to hear from him that he was checking her over and pushing on her and opening her eyes and all that stuff to say, come on, mom wake up, and she didn’t,” says Teddy.

“Be more comprehensive, because I’m telling you, I would never in a million years expected this to ever happen, and it can, and it did,” he says.

“You share your life together and you think you’re going to grow old together to watch your kids grow up and be good wholesome adults someday by all of your labors, and something like this comes along and just throws it all upside down,” said Teddy Klemm.

Why

The Outback is one of the safest vehicles on the road. But like every other vehicle, it isn't designed to protect occupants from side impacts above ~30 mph.
The Jetta SportWagen is one of the safest vehicles on the road. But like every other vehicle, it isn’t designed to protect occupants from side impacts above ~30 mph.

This is yet another senseless tragedy on our bloodbath of a road network. Reviewing the facts as presented, it seems clear that Cara was responsible for the collision. We don’t know how she was distracted (e.g., a phone, fatigue, daydreaming, talking to her children), but we can analyze the crash and the larger context of the tragedy.

The Jetta SportWagen

The ’09-’14 Jetta SportWagen is one of the safest cars on the road, and one of the best vehicles you could ask to be in before an imminent side impact. It received a “good” score overall and in all subcategories in the IIHS side impact test as well as a 5 star NHTSA side score. The side impact intrusion resistance as measured by the IIHS clocked in at 15.5 cm, which is one of the best side impact scores you can get in a station wagon even in 2017. It was a good vehicle.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly what I wrote when describing a similar crash from this past summer involving a young mother, a station wagon, rural roads, and a side impact while she drove with her 3 children. However, in that crash, which also involved one of the safest vehicles of the road, the mother (who was pregnant) and her 3 sons died. So what made the difference?

As in that case, the Jetta SportWagen was designed to handle 143.7KJ of kinetic energy in a side impact collision safely. In my experience calculating forces, individuals tend to survive up to 200% of designed force tolerances in their vehicles. Above that, however, survival odds drop significantly; I’d estimate the survival rate at 300% of expected forces drops to somewhere around 33%. Around how many KJ of energy did the dump truck transfer?

I’ve written about dump truck crashes before (e.g., here and here). The results are very frequently fatal, simply due to the massive amounts of kinetic energy carried by even empty dump trucks. A fully loaded truck can weigh 60,000 pounds or more. Using that as a baseline estimate and given the likely speeds of the collision (given the road design, I’d estimate 55 mph), the collision likely impacted at least 8.23 MJ (8,226 KJ) of energy into the dump truck / SportWagen. That would ordinarily be a fatal amount of energy for the SportWagen (or any passenger vehicle) to handle, especially when keeping in mind that the standard side impact test simulates 143KJ of energy (a 3300-lb sled impacting a vehicle at 31 mph). So if the SportWagen faced 5752%, or 57x the force it was designed to make survivable, how did anyone in it survive?

While it would be easy to give credit to the car seats, we do need to be realistic. Orphan seats they were; immortal seats they are not. Children do still die in rear-facing car seats; it’s just far less common due to how incredibly protective they are since they work with physics instead of against it. In this case, an examination of the photos and videos of the post-crash SportWagen provide the likely answers. It appears the car was impacted directly ahead of the driver door; this likely spun the vehicle severely and pushed it far away. It likely didn’t roll it, as evidenced by the virtually pristine right side of the vehicle (visible in the video above).

However, the forces of the dump truck were likely absorbed by the engine bay and the motion of the vehicle, with the most dangerous impact occurring away from the back seat area where the boys were stationed. Cara likely perished due to her proximity to the epicenter, while the boys survived due to being well restrained far from the impact, relatively speaking. It’s not the best explanation, but it’s the best I can come up with after reviewing this and similar cases in the past. Had the point of impact occurred directly at the driver’s door or any farther toward the rear of the vehicle, all three boys would likely have perished, as was the case in the tragedy I referenced above involving Lindsey and her boys.

Vision Zero

As usual, though, as tempting as it is to look at this as one more case study of personal responsibility, we mustn’t start and stop by shaking our heads at the fact that Cara Klemm didn’t stop at the stop sign at the intersection. Why she didn’t stop doesn’t matter very much if our goal is to eliminate all car deaths, as we’ll never reach a point where every driver is paying attention 100% of the time. I certainly don’t, and I don’t believe there is another living being who does. I’ve just been lucky not to have not being paying attention when my life depended on it.  A better approach is to look toward best practices–i.e., Vision Zero principles–so see how such a collision could have been either avoided or mitigated. And best practices here indicate, as they did in the Schmidt case, that a road such as that which enabled this collision should never have existed.

Once again, VZ principles forbid speed limits above 50 kph (31mph) at intersections where the potential for side impacts exist. Now, given the fact that the vehicle that hit the SportWagen weighed up to 20x more than a typical passenger vehicle, it’s entirely possible the SportWagen would not have been able to protect Cara anyway. In fact, a 60,000 lb truck would still have delivered 2.45MJ at 30 mph, a life-ending amount of force. However, given the fact that Cara’s sons survived the crash which involved forces 3x higher, it’s entirely possible that Cara might have survived had the forces been 3x lower. Remember, it wasn’t a direct hit to the occupant cabin of the SportWagen–had that been the case, everyone in the vehicle would have died. And as much of an advocate as I am for proper car seat use, I don’t believe even rear-facing all 3 children would have kept them alive from a direct hit by a dump truck at speed. But the lower the speeds of all vehicles involved in a given collision, the wider the window of survivability opens.

In this case, it didn’t open enough for Cara. But the fact that her sons survived meant that something in this crash was survivable, and had the intersection’s speeds been governed by best practices, it’s possible she might have lived.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can  shop here for Canadian purchases. Have a question or want to discuss best practices? Join us in the forums!