From reading this blog, you’ll know that when it comes to best practices in car safety, I advocate both driving safely and choosing your vehicles thoughtfully (which also extends to choosing a safe vehicle for your teenager, if you have one). Driving is one of the most dangerous things people do on a daily basis, and it makes sense to take it seriously and do everything possible to drive safely. With that said, sometimes the vehicle end of driver safety brings unwelcome surprises, and that was recently the case with the Mazda 5.
The IIHS finally got around to testing the Mazda 5, and the results were less than stellar.
Poor small overlap performance in the Mazda 5
Injury measures taken from the dummy indicate a high risk of injuries to the left thigh and left lower leg in a real-world crash this severe. The steering wheel moved to the right, and the dummy’s head barely contacted the front airbag before sliding off the left side. The safety belt allowed the dummy’s head and torso to move too far forward, so the head made contact with the left side of the dashboard. The side curtain airbag didn’t deploy at all, exposing the head to contacts with side structure and outside objects. Plus, the driver door unlatched during the test, something that shouldn’t happen and puts occupants at risk of being ejected from the vehicle.
In other words, in the small overlap collision, the Mazda 5 performed poorly. The most significant issues I see in the “poor” small overlap score are in the load levels placed on the left femur (11 kN); this points to a high likelihood of a broken thigh-bone, which is an extremely painful and limiting injury. Beyond that, the door opening means it would be easy to be flung out of the vehicle if any issues whatsoever occurred with the seat belt. Being ejected in a collision severely increases your odds of dying, whether by the trauma of contacting the ground, a tree, etc, or by the trauma of being run over by a passing vehicle. Doors shouldn’t open in any collisions.
The second issue with the Mazda 5 involved its side impact scores:
The Mazda 5 earns a marginal rating in the side impact test. That also makes it the only 2014-model car the Institute has evaluated to earn anything less than acceptable in the side test. Most models earn a good rating. Measures taken from the driver dummy indicate a likely pelvis fracture, and measures taken from the dummy seated in the rear passenger seat indicate that rib fractures and/or other internal organ injuries would be possible in a crash of this severity.
The wording here makes it sound as if the Mazda 5 was the only new vehicle to score less than well on the side test, which isn’t true; when the IIHS says “car”, they mean “car”, and not “minivan” or “SUV” of any kind, which means that vehicles like the Jeep Wrangler 4-Door, which also scored a “marginal” side impact score, don’t count here, as they classify the Wrangler as a “mid-sized SUV.” That said, the score is still unacceptable.
What does this mean for my family and child’s safety?
It means that the Mazda 5 isn’t as safe of an option for transport as its fellow minivans, such as the Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a safe vehicle. It has a good moderate overlap front score and a good roof score. It has side airbags and ESC. The small overlap score is poor, yes, but you can generally assume that the score would have been poor for every other vehicle without a small overlap score except for Volvo, which has been testing for the small overlap collision since the 1980s. The side score should be much better, but it’s still better than what you can expect from just about any vehicle that doesn’t have side curtain airbags, and the majority of vehicles did not have those until a few years ago.
In other words, this doesn’t mean you need to sell your Mazda 5. It just means that there are areas in need of significant improvement. To minimize your risks of death or injury in the Mazda 5, follow safe driving practices; they make much, much more of a difference than whether the small overlap and side scores are good or not.
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