Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP' | Hacker News Reader

Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

independent.co.uk

174 pointsthe-dude116 comments

At the risk of sounding cynical and jaded, is anyone remotely surprised by this? The EU has been pushing car encouraging manufacturers to work harder at car safety for longer, and more effectively than the US has.

Seat belts? Volvo. Air bags? First made standard in Mercs and Porsches, at a time when Ford and GM were lobbying against being made to include them. They became optional and then standard between the mid to late 90's, while legislation in the US made them a requirement in 98.

Shaped airbags? Citroen. Side impact airbags? Volvo. Curtain airbags? BMW.

The big difference though is the Euro NCAP ratings. It's near impossible to get a good score on them with just airbags, so the car manufacturers are forced to do more to score well, and it's become a solid marketing tool.

On the other hand, FMVSS 208 (the American testing standard) are designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, so fire far too hard, causing a lot of issues. Whilst they'll stop you dying, they'll cause huge trauma and other issues in doing so.

EU car safety technology regulation and manufacturer incentivisation is just a long way ahead, and has been for nearly two decades. So it's not surprising when something like this comes out.

[edit to include important side note]

Never wear anything flammable with sleeves while driving. Airbags are small explosions and can set flammable clothing on fire, causing severe burns &| death. If you need to be warmer, turn on the heater.

Also, never put your thumbs near the centre of the steering wheel. You don't want to be trying to get out of a car after an accident with broken thumbs, which is what you get when the airbag deploys.

> designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt,

What? To me it seems obivous that the right thing to do is have the seatbelt be part of the switch for the airbag -- no seatbelt, no detonation!

It's because the legislation originates from a time when most cars didn't have them as a legal requirement, so the assumption is that someone won't have one or be wearing it, if the car has it. That bit has never been updated.

It's exactly as insane as it sounds.

I'm not sure but I think airbags do detonate on most cars, regardless of the seat belt status. It would be too complicated or unreliable to couple the two systems.

However: an airbag isn't very effective (and could even be dangerous) without the seat belt, so manufacturers in Europe aren't really required to worry about the safety without seat belts. Effectively the safety regulations say: those with no seat belts are idiots breaking the law and it's not your job to worry about the safety those people. Which is completely sensible.

I think optional seat belt laws as found in some parts of the US can make some sense there (owing a lot to the fact that there is no single payer healthcare...) BUT the reasonable thing to do would be to not force car manufacturers to make cars less safe for those who do wear seat belts.

With regards to your first point, they do detonate. It's a question of how.

The main difference is the force with which they go off. In Europe, it's assumed you're wearing a seatbelt, so the force is less, which results in a lower likelihood of injury, compared to a US airbag. Personally, I prefer the European model - wear a seatbelt and you'll be fine, don't and it's on you.

   Personally, I prefer the European model - wear a seatbelt and you'll be fine, don't and it's on you.

The other way around is kind of insane - you increase the risk for everybody who is using their safety equipment properly, for the benefit of those who can't be bothered.

> I think optional seat belt laws as found in some parts of the US can make some sense there (owing a lot to the fact that there is no single payer healthcare...)

Wat? So because the taxpayer isn't directly picking up the healthcare bill, it's somehow okay to double serious crash-related injuries and deaths[1]?

[1] "Seat belts reduce serious crash-related injuries and deaths by about half." http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html

It's an age-old debate of "is it ok to (risk) hurting yourself?". Obviously car crashes and other injuries/deaths come at high cost to society even in the case of privatized health insurances, but the cost is at least indirect rather than direct. It's probably even true that the majority of the cost is indirect, and not related to healthcare. That said, not having a seat belt/helmet law is... well, stupid.

In the case of seatbelts I think there is more than only thyself. You might be able to control the vehicle better post-crash, preventing injury to bystanders or passengers.

Also, if you are belted in you are not a projectile ricocheting around the inside of the car and hitting other passengers.

There are always tradeoffs. In this case, risk compensation might lead a seat-belted driver to drive in more reckless fashion.

It's pretty direct unless you have a private ambulance. Otherwise it's tying up a valuable shared resource that could be used to save others whose life is in danger for reasons other than own stupidity.

It's kind of amazing that air bags were apparently standard in the US before seat belts were. Seat belts are far older technology as far as I know.

I'm not sure exactly what the grandparent was trying to say, but seat belts became mandatory new car features in the US back in the 1960s. Airbags became mandatory new car features in the early 1990s.

On the other hand, I believe seat belt usage was still under 50% in the early 1990s [1], when the airbag legislation was being written. (I was born in 1970, and the first time I remember wearing a seatbelt was the summer of ... '85? Getting a ride from a high school friend to football practice every day quickly made me a convert. :) )

[1] http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2015/07/30/michigan-se...

When I was a kid, in the 1970s, our car didn't yet have seat belts in the back, but in the front, they were required. I think when they became required in the back, it also became required to use if you had them, which obviously older cars didn't.

But having seat belts for decades and then not expecting people to use them, that's kinda silly.

I think "not expecting people to use them" is in accordance with actual facts, a substantial portion of drivers would flat-out refuse to wear seatbelts. (I feel as if this has changed in recent years, as those people age out, mellow, see reason, or die in car wrecks).

What I understood was that US regulations for airbags are intended for cars that have airbags only and no seat belts at all. And that those same requirements continue to be applied the airbags + seat belts vehicles we actually encounter.

(cynically, this seems entirely exactly like something Detroit would push for in order to disadvantage imports--so, although this sounds ridiculous, it rings as entirely admissible to me as "no duh" after reading that comment)

Light-duty trucks aren't considered cars in many states and so laws like seat belt requirements and emissions standards don't apply to them. I think it was just this past summer that seat belts became mandatory in trucks in Georgia. It wasn't until 2009 that light-duty trucks needed to be emissions tested and there's still all kinds of exclusions.

I have two German-made, US-delivery cars with seatbelt switches and pressure mats (occupancy detection) in the passenger seats. I was hoping that this made them smarter than the Toyota and Volvo I own which have no such things wired into their airbag systems, which certainly work as described in this thread.

I'm guessing here, so pinch of salt required etc...

I think you're probably in something safer there. The idea behind airbag activation sensors is that you don't want to trigger unnecessary deployments (for a few reasons, but that's a bit involved). That said, depending on the system setup and what type of crash you have, alters which car I'd rather be in.

TL;DR: don't crash.

When buying French-made used cars, one of the important things is to check that the seatbelt switches, pressure mats and their connections are OK. Otherwise, extremely annoying and somewhat costly visits to a car electricity specialist will be needed...

(This is necessary to pass the annual MOT test here, not just a safety concern - if the OBD interface reports any errors, the car is automatically rejected in the test. Other than that, used Citroëns seem to be fine.)

I want to clarify that in 2000 Volvo began selling cars in US with dual stage airbags (S80 at least) and by 2002 (in some cases MY03 cars though) all US Volvos had them for both front airbags.

Dual stage does not mean having the seat weight sensor. That is what is part of what is termed advanced airbag system in US market.

The Volvo system would inflate the airbag less or more rapidly based on force of collision and whether the seat was belted or not. You could have the dealer install a passenger side airbag lock-out though.

I'd rather have racing-style belts and no air bag. Racing style go over both shoulders, are wider, and are fixed length.

There are some horrific crashes in auto racing and the drivers walk away. That convinces me.

The same racing drivers who have to wear top-line racing helmets connected to HANS devices, wear fire-resistant overalls, have medical teams on immediate standby, and who are often strapped in by their mechanics before heading off?

I think you may be overlooking an awful lot of what makes modern motor racing safer than it was in the past.

(and that's ignoring the number of serious injuries and driver deaths that still occur thanks to freak accidents)

I'm looking at the kind of accidents where an airbag is supposed to be effective. An airbag will do nothing for you if the car is burning.

The first and foremost safety device in a race car is the racing belt. The belt means you slow down with the car, which is much less deceleration than if your body hits the dashboard. (The point of crumple zones in the car is to reduced peak deceleration. In order for that to work, you gotta be strapped in.)

An airbag allows the driver's head to experience even lower deceleration than the car, because it gives the head an extra 1-2 feet in which to decelerate--the distance between the upright position and smashed into the deployed airbag.

When wearing a 5-point harness without a helmet and head restraint, the deceleration delta between the car and the head will be entirely borne by the structure of the neck, which is how Dale Earnhardt died.

The fire suit and undergarments are what keeps you alive long enough to be extracted in the event of a fire. They are literally rated in terms of how long they protect you commonly listed as the "Time to 2nd Degree Burn" specification which is arrived at by taking the TPP rating per the SFI spec and halving it.

Before the HANS device was used in NASCAR, I witnessed some serious wrecks during auto-racing that drivers got out of the car under their own power and were fine.

I wonder if the percentage of fatalities from wrecks in auto racing is better or worse that high speed accidents on public highways. It would be an interesting statistic to compare.

Nascar cars use roll cages, so as long as you are strapped into your seat safely you will survive most crashes, if the car doesn't catch fire. Most regular cars don't have roll cages.

> as long as you are strapped into your seat safely

That's the important part. Most of the safety devices in a nascar car (or any racing car really) only make sense if you're tightly strapped in the first place. So the first thing is seatbelt, always. Then you can add more stuff protecting the driver under the assumption that the driver's body will move with the car rather than independently within it.

They also wear helmets while driving.

Do you also want to wear a HANS device every time you drive? That's a big part of the reason drivers walk away from horrific crashes these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device

The seat belts are the most effective. Helmets and HANS add to that, but the belts are the #1 safety device.

Another anecdote is in order. My father was a fighter jet instructor. The usual arrangement is tandem seating. He related an incident where the jet went off the runway, the nose gear sunk into the mud and the jet went up on its nose.

The guy in back had taken off his shoulder harness while taxiing, but left the helmet and lap belt on. He hit the dash so hard it left his brains splattered all over it, despite having a helmet.

The guy in front left his shoulder harness on, and was uninjured.

My father said that after seeing that, he never unbuckled the harness until the airplane was parked and the engines shut down. He also never moved his car an inch unless everyone in it was buckled up, and this was in the early 1960's long before it was fashionable. I picked up the habit from him :-)

There's a reason why they don't turn off the seat belt signs on planes until the plane's at the gate and the engines are off!

Thank you for sharing the story.

I too think that being buckled-in is the most important, but a 4 or 5 point harness will just not work in a street car. Maybe my best advice is for you to read the relevant sections in the SCCA handbook. Forget about the cage, assume just a cross bar and harness. You will see that it makes it impossible to have the harness at a safe orientation for the driver yet allow a rear passenger. Also when you add the cross bar as it also required, it is now unsafe for a rear passenger.

Further any car with a cage has other compromises and some of those reasons for a cage are for things like being able to quickly jack the car up and rigidity (not just safety) but limits how people can enter and exit for example.

A harness is just not a good fit for a street car. The three point seat belt is an excellent compromise.

I'm an amateur racer, and I can tell you that seat belts are only a small part of the equation that makes racing crashes survivable. Racing seats are built to fit individual drivers, for instance, and the cocoon -- the portion of the frame where the driver sits -- is designed to protect the seat.

Additionally, race cars are designed to essentially disintegrate in hard wrecks -- the cocoon stays intact, but the rest breaks away as a means of absorbing energy. Road cars have a similar design with crumple zones, but race cars take it many steps further.

It's also come to light in the last ~15 years that belts are simply not enough in some instances. Dale Earnhardt (possibly the most famous racer in history) died in an average-looking wreck at Daytona in 2001 because his neck snapped in a collision with the wall; drivers are now required to wear head and neck restraints to prevent this.

Track design plays a role as well. You've probably seen tire walls and gravel traps, but newer technologies -- like SAFER barriers (energy-absorbing walls made of steel and foam) -- have come along and are replacing the old guard.

There are certainly a lot of other things in racing that contribute to safety. But the biggie is always the harness.

A roll cage won't do jack for you if you're flying around in the cockpit smashing into the roll cage. Crumple zones are also ineffective if you're not strapped in.

Race cars don't have air bags. If you're strapped in tightly, the air bag adds nothing.

I've been in a crash where the belt saved my life, or at least prevented a crippling injury. I walked away with a broken nose. A roll cage or a HANS without belts would not have helped.

One of my cars has three point seat belts in front that do not spool. It is infuriating to unlatch the seat belt every time I have to back-up the car or reach for something on the passenger side. Racing harnesses are even more restrictive when adjusted properly.

iirc, Volvo did a lot of testing to find the optimum setup in an ordinary passenger car. The 3-point belts worked best, as they were the easiest to get out of after an accident. Remember that race cars typically have people waiting in the event of an accident to assist in removing the person from the car. In a more typical accident, it can be much longer before help arrives. As a result, seat belt setups must be easy for the user to get out of by themselves. While 5-point systems fared better in the actual accidents, 3-point systems more than compensated by allowing individuals to free themselves from the car and preventing further injuries.

The 5 point racing harnesses have a very easy to use quick release on it, as it releases all the straps at once. You don't have to unthread your arm from it, like you do with a typical car 3 point system, and the release on typical auto belts is inferior. The webbing is narrower and thinner, too.

I wonder if that was a factor in the Volvo study.

It doesn't seem like a five-point harnesses would work well with a skirt, dress or kilt.

They also make 4 point ones, which don't have that issue.

The crotch strap is to prevent your body from submarining out from under the lap belt.

When I crew it takes a few minutes to adjust the seat and harness anytime we have a driver change. The genius of the modern three point seat belt is how easy it is to put on (comparable to lap belt, yet much more effective), how comfortable it is to wear (with the advent of the spool and height adjustment), and effective (due to seatbelt pretensioners).

If this is your logic, you should be riding a motorcycle!

https://www.quora.com/Motorsports/Is-MotoGP-more-dangerous-t...

I've often wondered how many lives would be saved if people wore helmets during daily driving. I'd bet a lot. Of course, good luck getting people to do it.

I would not be surprised if helmet usage increased serious accidents/injuries and fatalities. The peripheral vision (for crossing roads, rotaries, and spotting pedestrians) is vastly worse wearing a helmet, at least the SA full-face helmets I've worn in amateur motorsports.

Race tracks don't have most of those hazards, and control most of the pedestrian hazards, with the limited pedestrians on the hot side of the pit wall assuming much of the responsibility for their own safety.

This would be offset by a reduction in head injuries (with a possible increase in neck and spinal injuries). I think I'd bet a full study would show an overall decrease in safety.

Agree massively with this. Most of the problems with drivers these days seem to be caused by inattention, sleepyness etc.

The first thing anyone says in a small ish accident (especially as a cyclist/motorcyclist) is SORRY MATE DIDN'T SEE YOU THERE

I actually wonder if there is a limit on the size of the A pillar in cars. The car I drive right now seems like it has a larger A pillar than the (super old) car I had before, presumably for safety. But it's almost caused me to get into several accidents as I am almost completely blind when slighting left. Just the other day I nearly hit a pedestrian who was crossing against the light. I slowed down for the turn but had the green light, and the pedestrian was crossing the street at just the right speed to stay in the blind spot of my driver's side A pillar. If I hadn't moved my head to double check, I would have run them over. I've never had this issue on any other car, but it's a big problem for me right now.

So imagine that blocking a good section of your forward vision, and a helmet blocking anything to the sides... motorcycles have very small blind spots as the rider can swivel anywhere with no cage blocking them. Helmets are a minor contributor. But cars don't have that luxury.

http://static.cardesignnews.com/CropUp/728x-/media/10926146/...

Sadly never made it to production.

"vastly worse wearing a helmet, at least the SA full-face helmets"

Which is why the research into this topic focuses more on headbands, which mostly protect the forehead, than the entire head. See http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/10/australian-helmet-scien... for a summary of Australian research and a sketch of the head gear. They quote:

> But more impressive were the estimates of introducing protective headwear for car occupants. The authors of the report estimated that the annual reduction in harm would be in the order of $380 million. The benefit of padding the head is that the head is protected from strikes with unpadded automotive components, exterior objects and in vehicles that predate any eventual introduction of padded interiors."

You can't even get people to reliably wear helmets when riding a motorcycle.

5 point harnesses are completely impractical with many types and styles of clothing.

I don't know if you can legally install one to replace your 3 point by choice, but if you mandated them I suspect seat belt usage would plummet, which seems counterproductive.

For that matter, mandated helmet usage would improve many types of injuries, but I don't see that flying either.

From a public safety point of view, many of these decisions are more about balancing compliance and safety, rather than safety alone.

Well, the US car manufacturers must have been surprised. They commissioned the study, and must have thought they could spin the results to prove that the difference is negligible.

My guess is the real difference is even bigger than this report shows.

I don't think the EU pushed Volvo though; for the longest time, their slogan was "Drive Safely" and they've always been emphasising safety over other features.

Correct. Volvo (and Saab too) were always and still are nuts about car safety. On a very related note, the Volvo Vision 2020 project:

http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/roadsafe/unda/Swede...

TL;DR: no-one should die or be seriously injured in a crash in a new Volvo by 2020 (two vehicle generations away from now).

Mostly that's based on Gilb's first two Laws of Unreliability (computers are unreliable, but humans are far more so, and systems which depend on human reliability are by definition unreliable).

In Top Gear's tribute to Saab, Clarkson said that a senior designer friend at "another Sweedish car company" told him that no one could figure out why Saabs cost as much as they did, until they crash tested them.

> Also, never put your thumbs near the centre of the steering wheel.

The normal way of holding a steering wheel (thumb and forefinger forming an "O" around the wheel) may increase risk of minor wrist and hand injuries during small accidents. This probably isn't important for the general population, but for people who make a living with their hands it's worth mentioning.

http://www.boneandjoint.org.uk/sites/default/files/FocusOn_S...

> Less commonly, forced dorsiflexion against a steering wheel in a motor vehicle accident or a ball forcing the palm dorsally can cause a scaphoid fracture

http://www.physio-pedia.com/Scaphoid_Fracture

> Less common mechanisms of injury are:

> wrist extension with deceleration such as with the hand on a steering wheel

Although cupping the wheel with your hands may be more dangerous in other ways.

I like the saying "thumbs-up for thumbs-out!"

There's more to it than the airbag. In an accident the steering wheel can carry a lot of force. Frangible and later collapsible steering columns (and now common power steering) have alleviated by a lot but it is still quite a lot of force. You don't want just pushing or pulling vigorously on on the wheel or a huge pothole to affect it. In the time before airbags when these things were created it was more to prevent breaking too many ribs while impaling the driver.

So anyway, problem to this day is that the wheel can wretch around by many degrees very rapidly in an accident. This can break a thumb or what not. So don't wrap your thumb around the wheel but have them more in a Fonzie thumbs-up jut off to the outside.

In the time before airbags it was also recommended to take your hands off the wheel and have your forearms over your chest and chest and hands over face the moment you no longer had control and could not regain it before the impact. This protected your ribs and face. The advice now is to bring your hands up to your armpits without any crossing or covering in an airbag equipped car.

So does that mean if I buy a European car in the USA (a USA car, not a special import) the airbags will go off with more force?

> are designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt

That's Joan Claybrook's fault. While she did champion many much-needed safety improvements, this and the 85-mph speedometer were not her best ideas.

For the inside story on this and other auto industry disasters, pick up a copy of Jason Vines' book:

http://www.amazon.com/What-Did-Jesus-Drive-Christianity-eboo...

*I asked him, "What the hell is a thermal event?" "Um," he paused, "The vehicle could catch on fire."

Rather than write many replies to those in this thread (often rehashing the same thing) I am going to reply here and address it all. There are many people claiming outdated info as current fact and misinterpreting what the differences actually imply in US v. EU occupant crash protection.

Regarding the airbags. The US now requires advanced frontal airbags in all passenger cars and light trucks. It started phasing them in back in 2003. Moreover prior in 1997 the NHTSA permitted depowered airbags which rapidly became the norm. Here is a nice FAQ with more details:

http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shoppers/Air+Bags/Advanced+F...

Now for the gist and background: In the '70s GM pioneered research into airbags (as an aside the interior of the contemporary Volvo SCC which became the 240 simply looked like a bumper car instead https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/12042626... ). In the world as a whole (not just US) seat belt use was dismal. So initially it was hoped that they could be used without seat belts. Since the original systems were so cumbersome (for example one of them used a bottle of compressed gas) and complicated (the original acceptable switches were wighted metal balls with rings of conductors and springs) it took quite a while for them to get developed to the point that they were acceptably reliable, safe, and priced. To give an example, one consideration not immediately obvious is how the head rebounds off the airbag and into what with how much force. It took quite a lot of development that is not appreciated my most people these days, very worthwhile effort which has saved and improved the quality of life for many.

Yet by that point in time seat belt use was still abysmal in US. In some parts of Western Europe it was improving more rapidly. So policy was in US for the airbags to deploy faster and bigger (which might not be expected, but the reason is that the occupant might be not where you expect, for example sliding down into the footwell or about to be ejected from a window). The interesting aspect to this is that there is data that the US style was even better for belted adult occupants (of not small stature - more on that in a bit) in more severe accidents. This is because until the more recent advent of seat belt pretensioners and later knee bolsters it was common for occupants to slide under the steering wheel while braking or have their chest pulled in to closer than 10" from the air bag cover from same braking.

One other thing to keep in mind is that air bags were seen as a supplemental restraint system due to the lack of seat belt use in US and the requirements were initially for there to be such an SRS in place (not necessarily airbags) for certain fleet percentages by certain dates. One unexpected result was that airbag fleet saturation was lower than predicted initially due to a fluke of history. Airbags by that point used explosive charges and there were a number of snafus in their manufacture initially related to that. Ford in particular was very hard hit but a number of European makes faced shortages as well. That shortage and changing US regulation were two more reason why Peugeot pulled-out of US market since they could not surmount in a profitable manner for example. This led to the proliferation of systems that would have the shoulder belt in place at all times. Chrysler in particular benefited greatly from dumb luck in that the suppliers it had picked did not have any factories blow-up essentially and even had marketing in place at the time touting how their cars had airbags while their competitors did not.

Now back to short occupants: It was realized that the airbags were injuring or killing occupants in some cases early on. Again at that time seat belt use was still poor in US. So aftermarket airbag cut-off switches were permitted. There was also a process for having them certified for use. It was not uncommon for people that needed them (smaller drivers, those that needed to transport a child in the front, elderly, and so on) to have them installed at a dealer and shortly after that they became common place in US cars which were most likely to need them (such as pickups) as standard equipment.

With time seat belt use became much more prevalent in US. At that point depowered airbags were allowed and they rapidly became common place (due to the attention created from the deaths and injuries caused my the prior systems - of which there were few around 200 at that time, vastly out numbered by those benefited) and practically no cost difference. That brought US and EU airbags more in line, but there was still a critical difference. The US airbags were often larger. It was not all about preventing the ejection of an unbelted occupant though. Another consideration was the front middle seat occupant (most often a child with only a lap belt at best) which was still common due to non-extended cab pickups and family/luxury cars with a front bench seat.

Which now brings me to advanced frontal airbags which are now required in US in entire passenger and light truck fleet for just over nine years. Essentially the minimum is that the system calculates occupant weight to determine if the airbag will be prevented from deploying. There is moreover a requirement that the SRS warning label state that an advanced airbag system is in place (with specific clear wording) and also an indicator light (also specifically clearly labeled) indication when the passenger front airbag is disabled. It is very common for the advanced frontal airbag system to also take into account factors such as collision forces and whether the occupant is belted or not in deciding whether to deploy the airbag or not. There are now also systems in place that in addition to all of that also take into account individual seat and spool positions. More over dual igniter systems are becoming more common place, so that front airbag can be inflated more rapidly (though more forcefully) only if needed. In addition multi-stage and variable output air bag systems are permitted in US as well, though they are rarer and typically in more costly cars.

So it really is becoming that US regulations are coming more in line to that of EU and with time and further tweaking of the regs it will become a moot difference - the airbags will be very smart and only deploy most forcefully only when safe and most necessary. Along the way there were many benefits. The US regs are not stagnant nor created in a vacuum as some seem to think. There was history, market forces, and data to what took place and when. Here is one further benefit to the US system that not many people expect: Over time the rules were in fact different across Europe regarding air bags. For example Spain's requirements were slightly different from France's at different times and what happens when you bring that car into Poland and sell it? What about if you bring an older Polish car and sell it in Spain or France, oh boy! There are a number of differences that fall under the US advanced airbag umbrella all handled differently in those three countries at different times, for example in what is permitted regarding the switch based on weight vs. a physical switch and if the seat belt is latched or not to how this is all indicated and labeled. It's a real mess. In US, you just flip the sun visor down and read what you have. Even the procedure for after market alteration specifies that that warning label must be amended appropriately - and how that is to be worded is very specifically laid-out. It's quite impressive to me actually how well this all was thought-out.

Now as to the article. It's not a very good article really. Here's the paper itself (pdf):

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/11297...

I've read through parts and I'll not touch the issue of how it relates to TTIP, but really it shows both in some ways how some EU regs are seeming better and how some US regs as well are seemingly better when you examine crashes statistically. Of course there is not nearly as much raw data for example in the headlight example (you can read the paper itself for details, essentially they had to cull the data down to one hour in one month per each territory and that effects confidence in the result). But to my eyes it really is not all that damning for the US airbag system. The worst results are for high speed driver side front/side airbag deployments (which are difficult to begin with) but when I read through I am not convinced it is factoring all differences from region to region sufficiently to have such a strong claim. For example it's only more recently that advanced airbags were introduced and the early systems were cruder than the current commonly used systems. Cars tend to stay on the road longer in US than EU (particularly in the regions without inspections where my further points will hold as well) so there were many cars with cruder SRS in place. There are many rural areas in those places the roads are not illuminated, there is oncoming and side traffic, wild-life, and people travel are high speed. Further there are more higher GVW cars on the roads in US which could affect the side impact statistics largely to the extent highlighted in my opinion. Notice how well the US does in rollover, that's largely because the market here is different and so it was addressed because there were more cars more prone to roll overs and more people were suffering. So I read over the paper and I personally do not yet believe it controlled for the differences in territories sufficiently.

That said, it's an excellent paper with some surprising results. What I take away from it is really it is a further impetus to move the advanced airbag systems in place in US farther to the higher tech and at least dual-mode operation across the entire fleet. You will never be able to fully address the belted vs. unbelted completely in US simply for practical reasons like people using light trucks in a manner where they back or egress the vehicle often so it's good to still account for it intelligently. Also it would seem wise for the EU to investigate US illumination requirements as they pertain to pedestrian safety cause the results were tantalizing there (though possibly not controlled well enough as well as lacking sufficient data) in the same way that I would hope that US is investigating autodipping intelligent headlights now.

To elaborate on NCAP: to reach the highest level of safetly in Europe, there are certain accident scenarios involving pedestrians where the safety of the pedestrian factors in (i.e. not only the passengers' ).

I wouldn't be surprised if we see lots of things like this come out over the next months.

VW has got seriously burned, but I highly doubt that they are the only ones fiddling the playing field.

More than likely, different manufacturer's (especially the big ones with lots of money) can afford to take their competitor's cars to pieces and look for areas where their competitors are cheating. They take them apart to gather engineering knowledge from competitors already.

Then they leak that information. Why?

Because if you are the only one to step in your own dog shit, then you stink and look stupid. If you make everyone step in their own dog shit, then everyone collectively stinks. If you can't avoid the smell, you learn to accept it. Somewhat like living in London in the 1600's.

So the report was published normally, and this "burying" consists of lobyists not talking about it much? And therefore the press not writing about it much?

Press and politics seem to be depending on lobyists to determine the agenda, and even do their work sometimes, which I think is a problem that has gotten out of hand, and not only in the car industry.

It is also a lack of civic society. There are not enough mainstream organisations fighting these issues.

At this address you will find six pages of links to such organizations: https://www.aaafoundation.org/useful-links

The worrying part here isn't that the cars are not safe, or that TTIP will allow certified cars from the US be sold in EU, but that the industry tries to hide it.

And that there is apparently a gap between certification in the US and certification in the EU.

I think the timing is very interesting with regard to dieselgate.

Yes it's really fun all around, with EU manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent US emission regulations and US manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent EU safety regulations.

I'd take more stringent safety standards over ridiculous emissions standards any day. Though, you could argue stricter safety standards fly in the face of emissions standards. More weight in the car, plus if the occupant survives, their carbon footprint is still there.

The cheating EU cars are emitting 40x the pollution which is why air quality in Europe sucks.

At least in some places it certainly does:

http://www.france24.com/en/20150320-paris-city-smog-pollutio...

People can decide to drive or not drive. Or at least decide to drive less. Kids with asthma and elderly can't decide not to breathe. Although evidently VW was content to effectively encourage them in the direction of not breathing.

EU cars will be recalled all over the globe for cheating, there are no US recalls because they did not cheat. The EU cars violate EU regulations by cheating. It should be fun for them as it appears to be industry wide and state sanctioned. Maybe they can raise their pollution limits enough that they are not recalled in the EU.

Did they really try to hide it though? They didn't attempt to stop the report from being published.

All they did was not promote it themselves. Is that a bit unethical? Perhaps, but saying they actively tried to hide or bury it makes it seem like they tried to stop the researchers from publishing their results or otherwise put pressure on them to fudge their results. Neither of those things happened.

Honestly, I think the Independent is making a big deal out of it because of the current perception around the VW scandal. And everyone in this thread is eating it up. If this same thing happened without the VW scandal, I doubt anyone cares half as much.

The Independent have been running this story all week, few others have made it a story like they have in their papers (they do a tabloid version of the Independent too, not that anyone reads papers these days).

American safety standards have worked well for the U.S. over the years, many European (and other) marques simply don't bother to put their cars through the tests or to spoil their designs with 'Duplo lego style' headlamps/bumpers and other odd U.S. requirements for what Americans consider 'safety'. It has been like this too with emissions over the years, why bother exporting to the U.S. when it is so much hassle to get a car good for the E.U. market dumbed down for the U.S. market?

There is also the Chicken Tax (25% on light trucks), so there is a lot of protectionism under various guises of safety/pollution that has gone on over the years. No idea why things are going to be 'harmonised' now, however the status quo has left American motors retarded as far as engineering is concerned. This makes all American cars uncompetitive as far as the rest of the developed world is concerned. Tesla is probably the only exception. Other than the desirable Tesla, American cars have at best novelty value in Europe, only bought by people who have some other motive - stretched limos, that sort of thing.

Safety itself is a complete joke regardless of what regulations you have. On a recent visit to Silverstone I could not help but notice how every car had a roll cage, harness seating and a driver accessible fire extinguisher amongst other modifications. And Silverstone does not have trees to hit at the side of the road, there is zero on-coming traffic and it is not exactly as if there are side-roads, or even unexpected twists in the track. Admittedly speeds are a tad higher than what you can expect on the school run, however, go at 40mph or higher in any consumer automobile and you are going to be heading for the hospital if you hit something hard like another car doing the same speed the other way. In fact I don't think the NCAP tests are ever above 40 mph for this very reason.

The actual report (pdf) which is much better than this wordy article that only lists one data-point:

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/11297...

This study examined the hypotheses that vehicles meeting EU safety standards perform similarly to US regulated vehicles in the US driving environment, and vice versa. The analyses used three statistical approaches to “triangulate” evidence regarding differences in crash and injury risk. Separate analyses assessed crash avoidance technologies, including headlamps and mirrors. The results suggest that when controlling for differences in environment and exposure, vehicles meeting EU standards offer reduced risk of serious injury in frontal/side crashes and have driver-side mirrors that reduce risk in lane-change crashes better, while vehicles meeting US standards provide a lower risk of injury in rollovers and have headlamps that make pedestrians more conspicuous.

This is outrageous but not surprising at all. In my opinion, more than a car safety issue, this is a money-making issue. EU pushes car manufacturers to build safer cars but this has a high cost. European customers respond well to marketing campaigns promoting safety. Therefore, those extra safety costs have a good return on investment. In the US, car safety is not considered as important as in EU because companies don't think there will be a good ROI. Because car manufacturers don't believe is viable enough, they tried to hide this report.

The most interesting part of this for me is that there is a difference at all. The difference is not explained in the article.

I've never lived in the US; what is the difference between EU and US cars in this respect?

Edit for clarity: What I meant, is /why/ is there such a difference in safety? What physical differences between the cars cause that?

Please read the article again:

"passengers in a typical EU model are 33 per cent safer in front-side collisions, an accident that often results in serious injury, than those in a typical US model."

Less deaths and injuries if cars meet EU standards

I read that, I saw the difference. Sorry I wasn't clear in my original post.

I meant: what causes the difference? Why is there such a big difference?

Quite simply US car manufacturers don't have to make their cars as safe, as a result they include bare minimum safety requirements to pass regulation and save on costs. As another poster says it also seems that they do little R&D in this area either, again probably to save costs and to be able spend money designing more inefficient trucks for single occupants.

That's only part of it, US law requires safty systems to designed around for an adult not using a belt which results in a less safe car when someone wares a belt or is not an adult male.

PS: EU microcar are terrable in high speed crashes, but there not designed for high speed driving either. So it's generally not a real world issue.

Well thats some dumb regulation right there. There is a law that requires people to wear seatbelts and then you make another law that says design safety equipment as if people are ignoring the original law.

This penalises law abiding citizens to protect those who decide to ignore the law and not wear a seatbelt.

Sorry. That's a way harder question :-)

I guess it's all a trade off of material/weight vs performance. If you make a more rigid passenger compartment then it might weigh more and your car might be slower. Or maybe you have to spend more on a stronger type of steel that is more expensive. Or you have to make something more complicated to be safer.

So on average maybe the US cars come down on the lighter/cheaper/faster side of the curve. Obviously the trade offs are incredibly complicated.

The US fleet tends to be heavier on average, surely? More SUVs/light trucks, larger vehicles in general.

Which means that your opposing/counterpart vehicle in the accident is also heavier.

Crash survival depends on the dissipation of kinetic energy into the structures of the vehicle rather than the structures of the human body. Even in well-designed vehicles, more kinetic energy means more danger.

I think you may appreciate my two part answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280323

Essentially at this point there is much less difference than there used to be, I'm not convinced the paper addressed that completely, and the historical progression is detailed.

I don't understand the issue here, cars sold in Europe already include many US cars obviously, and cars that sell in Europe are usually safety tested, for example by Euro NCAP. Here is a US car available in Europe, that has an excellent five star safety score in NCAP http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/cherokee/8871

Now if "research actually established that American models are much less safe when it comes to front-side collisions" then those differences presumably apply to US models that aren't currently sold in Europe, and thus have never been tested here. If a model eventually will be sold in Europe (in any numbers) it will presumably be tested in Europe too, and those safety differences would show up in the tests?

It doesn't worry me that some new car is approved for sale while not being safe, I wouldn't buy it until I see five Euro NCAP stars, and that I think goes for most European consumers. Relaxing the approval wouldn't change the testing! If US manufacturers want to sell cars in Europe they will have to not meet regulations but satisfy NCAP.

(That said: cars like the new mustang might never be tested in NCAP, nor will it have to to compete with European performance cars which often aren't tested either, or score poorly. Performance car buyers don't seem very safety concerned so crashing expensive cars that sell in small numbers doesn't seem worthwhile).

I might be wrong but it seems the point of the TTIP is to say "Ok our norms are equivalent in the US and EU, so a US car does not need to pass EuroNCAP to be sold in Europe"

Or rather we would align EuroNCAP on less demanding american norms, which would have the same result. A five star EuroNCAP post-TTIP would not be equivalent to a 5 star pre-TTIP.

EuroNCAP isn't a regulatory thing, and it isn't mandatory, it's basically just publicly fundded consumer information. Even if more models are allowed to be sold because they pass new "harmoinized" (read: relaxed) safety regulations after TTIP, they won't sell unless they score high on NCAP. (Specialty models like pickups, performance cars likely not that sensitive, but regular passenger cars and SUV's definitely would sell poorly without a high NCAP score). A US manufacturer knows this.

I don't think (at least I hope) that NCAP would ever relax their testing procedures. Rather, they make it stricter every year, as they should.

Thanks for the clarification. In my mind, it was mandatory.

What you have to remember is that those European Chrysler efforts like the Jeep are not made in America. They are made by Magna Steyr in Austria alongside plenty of other SUV's - the BMW ones and the Mercedes ones have been made in the same OEM/contract facility over the years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Steyr

Yes. But it's probably not because they are manufactured here that it gets 5 stars in NCAP. Surely it's because they know that if they want to actually sell any Jeeps, they better have 5 stars?

The same would be true for an american 2016 SUV that isn't available in Europe today, if they want to launch it in Europe.

I believe the US manufacturer would either change it to achieve 5 stars, or make an EU model that gets 5 stars, or just not sell it in the EU. And that is regardless of whether the regulations are relaxed so that it could be sold as-is in Europe!

This is not true anymore.

The KL (current Cherokee) is made in Toledo OH USA, even those sold in Europe. The most common engine for EU markets is made in Italy though. Magna Steyr has not made a Jeep for something like five years and never this current generation.

Sounds like the EU versions of US cars are currently re-engineered to meet EU standards, and that costs manufacturers money. They're trying to save that cost by saying all rules are equivalent. From the article:

> under current rules cars sold globally, such as the Ford Focus or Volkswagen Golf, must still be re-engineered multiple times - at considerable expense to manufacturers - to satisfy crash-test standards around the world

I'm totally fine with homogenizing safety standards across the world. But it has to be done by lifting the lower standards up to the higher level, not the other way around.

For that Cherokee the inflator for driver is different in the US v EU models. I believe that Arc manufactures them and they get used in the same Delphi and KSS housings to this day. The passenger unit is different though even noticeably externally. There are also regulatory differences pertaining to the seat sensor operation. Basically it costs money to do all this twice.

Another reason why Tesla is so far ahead of the game. Elon Musk had the engineers design the vehicle to be as safe as possible, period.

They didn't design the safety of the car with the crash tests in mind. They passed all the crash tests with flying colors as a side-effect of actually designing for safety.

A lot of people think that airliner safety comes from the FAA hammering on Boeing. That's not true at all. It's the attitude of Boeing and Boeing engineers that make it safe. (I used to be a Boeing engineer on flight critical systems.) The worst nightmare of a Boeing engineer is an accident resulting from his design mistake.

The worst for me was when the Alaska 717 went down because the stabilizer jackscrew failed. I worked on the 757 jackscrew. It was a while before I found out it wasn't the 757 design.

Safety came from the engineers who knew what they were doing and would refuse to put their name on anything that they weren't sure about.

I also know of instances where Boeing produced safer designs and had to lobby the FAA to get them to accept them. One example is using twin engines on overwater flights, rather than 3 or 4. The twin engines are statistically safer.

I know of cases where Boeing designs were much safer than that required by the FAA, and the FAA later adopted the Boeing designs as a requirement.

I've actually felt a lot safer flying after my time at Boeing and knowing the nuts and bolts of how they were made and the dedication and competence of the engineers in charge.

> I also know of instances where Boeing produced safer designs and had to lobby the FAA to get them to accept them. One example is using twin engines on overwater flights, rather than 3 or 4. The twin engines are statistically safer.

Interesting. Why do you think it is that twin engines are statistically safer? I thought redundancy was a normal part of the safety toolkit for planes.

I was told that more engines mean more possible failures, and that outweighed the advantage of redundancy. It's counterintuitive, but when you work the numbers for engines, it's true. It took Boeing a few years to convince the FAA.

I think it's even true for single vs. twin engine planes. A lot of it has to do with - are the systems redundant, or are they both needed to properly fly the plane. Also whether the probability adds up in a serial or parallel fashion. I know a friend that pilots a single engine Cessna. Obviously one engine, but it also has no electronic ignition and four magnetos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_magneto The engine operates without the use of a battery because of this. I think the Cessna has a battery for auxiliary systems, but by removing the battery, spark module, and electronic timing/distributor from the critical path of engine operation, the chances of failure are lower. The four magnetos are for the four cylinders in the engine, but any one magneto can run the entire engine. In this case, the four items are redundant.

I think the first twin engine commercial airliner to be certified for over-water flights was the 777. It can take off, fly 6000 miles, and land safely with one engine and a full load.

I'm interested in how these redundancies have accumulated over the life of building aircraft. They're obviously for good reason. However the recent news pieces comparing electric aircraft, I wonder if there's a lot of efficiencies on the table for conventional aircraft if they could just drop in a modern engine like you might find in a race car.

That's a good point. Gasoline engines have come a long way since the days of magneto operation, with variable timing, ignition, and direct injection (of which some piston driven aircraft may already use). Turboprops and turbofans (jets) are already very efficient compared to automotive piston engine aircraft. A 747 for instance gets around 91 mpg/person while buses average around 200 mpg/person - but, the drag forces on an aircraft are I think at least an order of magnitude greater.

Minor point: it's two magnetos, each magneto driving a separate ignition harness and spark plug in each cylinder.

Each system is tested in the pre-flight by grounding out (shutting down) the left magneto and making sure the right magneto can run the engine and all those plugs are firing, then repeating the test with the right magneto grounded (shut down) and making sure the left mag, harness, and plugs are capable of running the engine.

If you're further trying to wrap your head around it an example would be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

An engine failure manages to disable all hydraulic links and redundancies in the aircraft.

The FAA hammers on pilots and airlines too though, which might otherwise try to cut corners to save costs on safety.

I am very impressed with US Aerospace engineering. Having read a book or two containing personal accounts, it makes me feel "proud" of American engineering, even though I'm not American.

I've written software for 9-1-1 and the first few months in operation, I barely slept and would often awake terrified. I can only imagine how it must be for someone that might actually actively kill many people due to an engineering flaw.

When you remove the huge chunk of metal in front of the cabin that is the engine, you might expect better performance in a front impact test. The structure of the car doesn't have to circumvent the engine, gearbox and a lot of other complicated and heavy bits that have to sit in a specific place.

None of the Tesla cars are as "safe as possible". Trivial proof: Reducing the max speed to 1kph would make it safer. Just like after 11-Sept the USG said they will prevent another attack "at all costs". Why not shut down all flights permanently then?

Tesla might design cars to a very high safety standard, but it's certainly a tradeoff with performance, style, comfort, etc.

Apologies in advance if this was pointlessly pedantic.

Tesla Model S is interesting example actually. Initially it was imported into EU with something of a waiver from full ECE regs due to few number. Some of the earliest ones in EU have 8 airbags just as in US (larger dual stage front airbags), then more with ECE front (dual layer) airbags. By MY15 all had only six airbags, the knee bolsters were removed. The reason for this is that in US models with dual stage airbags the knee bolsters deploy in unison with the seatbelt pretensioners to keep the front occupants positioned safely when the front airbag deploys an since they are dual stage units it is very important that happen. The Model S is a big enough car that with the smaller less forceful ECE airbags it is not so much of an issue if the occupant slides under a bit and has abdomen closer to airbag as it deploys. This was likely done for cost as it did not provide enough ROI in terms of safety in EU markets. There is a digit in the VIN in fact that codifies these differences. In addition there are a number of other safety systems that differ between US and EU models of the S.

Tesla did make a very safe car, but they did not do so blind to varying regulations in different markets as well as the demands or running a business profitably.

Where can I read the actual report?

Here you go (pdf): http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/11297...

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