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They can probably achieve this because they are a young company. "Generational" companies has a tendency to fall into a "best known practices" void. Usually these best practices have some sort of merit behind them. Either technically (to minimize risk or keep existing process) or economically (existing tooling or manufacturing plants). The red tape can be hard to break through even if you're an engineer that knows of a way to make the chassis safer.

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If there is one thing western, read US, European, Japanese and Korean, car makers don't compromise it is safety. They might cheat (some of them are real frauds) on emissions. Safety on the other hand is simply to important and to thoroughly conzrolled for that. There is post on thus thread explainingvthe mechanical design side of things pretty well.

Are you unaware of the Takata airbag scandal?

Counter point: Tesla's bursting to flames. ;-)

Takata was a scandal, even more so as it was Japanese supplier. I just hope we don't use exceptions to the rule in general discussion now, are we?

Counter point: Every car bursting into flames

Yeah, but Takata was a pretty major "exception" -- it resulted in the biggest safety recall in American history Even though all of its other competitors gave up on using cheap ammonium nitrate because of its inherent instability, Takata pushed forward, as if they had some magical engineering solution. This decision required years of deliberate delusion and coverup and denial of evidence. It was not just some blunder that was tragically overlooked.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-06-02/sixty-mil...

I wish I shared this naive outlook on life. Everything in manufacturing is a compromise. Just because the up-and-coming Chinese and Indian car manufacturers aren't as big on safety as the "Western" world doesn't mean that our car companies don't cheat at it and cut corners all the time. We just had a much bigger head start at it.

The first time soneone called me naive, I'll just take it as a compliment. I think the big difference is what we define as cheating. Optimising towards test, no cheating in my POV. Using one type of steel, as an example, for crash test and something different for production -> cheating.

They do have to make trade-offs, true. But every other company has to do that as well, some tend to one side others favor different characteristics. Tesla, to stay on topic, is no exception there. SOmeone else discribed the test philosophy and the impact on car design very well.

"I think the big difference is what we define as cheating. Optimising towards test, no cheating in my POV. Using one type of steel, as an example, for crash test and something different for production -> cheating."

Is it still cheating if there is a loophole that allows that substitution of steel?

Very interessting edge case. Legally no. Personnaly I would say no as well, morally it would be absolutely unexceptable. But then the loop-hole is the issue and not the use of it, right? Same goes for the Toyota example montioned above. The optimized for an existing test, fair enough. Testing changed, so Toyota has to adopt (if they didn't already). Again not really cheating.

I think that normal people internalize a multi-layered context of ethical rules. Following the letter of the law is only one layer. Hence most people would not say "fair enough" just because regulations were followed, if the meta-rules of society were not. I don't think it is possible to do away with meta-rules by writing more detailed laws, although I get the impression that is an increasingly popular assumption. In my opinion, the ubiquity of computers leads to an overestimation of our capability for directly handling complexity in rule-based systems.

Hm just a few days ago there's news about Subaru admits to falsifying data directly related to car safety:

http://www.thedrive.com/news/23955/subaru-admits-to-falsifyi...

That is some hard stuff. Thanks for calling it out, I wasn't aware of that.

You are overly trusting.

Toyota was caught overoptimizing for crash tests recently. They designed their Sienna minivan for small overlap driver's side impacts, but didn't reinforce the passenger side because there wasn't previously a test for that. Now there is. Oops.

"While Toyota has modified the structure of the vehicle to improve driver-side protection starting with 2015 models, the automaker did not make the same changes to the passenger side"

https://jalopnik.com/the-toyota-sienna-bombed-the-toughest-p...

I'm not suggesting Toyota is the only one who designs their cars to precisely pass the tests, either. If Toyota does it, I think it's almost certain other major manufacturers take a similar approach. Volvo has a reputation for being more holistic, but who knows if it's deserved? But any major manufacturer can optimize for crash testing, and it's more economically efficient than going the extra mile, which means it's likely that's just what they do.

Small overlap drivers side collision is basically a partial head on collision on a two lane road?

Seems like the drivers side is far more likely to encounter that sort of collision.

I don't have statistics, but what if a person is driving along a street with parked cars and someone pulls out such that the impact is on the right corner instead? That seems like a plausible scenario.

Or a car is unexpectedly stopped in the right lane because of an accident or a police stop. I came around a corner with no visibility today to find a police car attending to a wrecked vehicle on the right.

First, The energy of a head on collision is twice that of a perpendicular collision. (+-, depends on mass and such). This also applies to car -> stationary car.

Second, one of the basic rules of the road is that you have to be able to stop within your sight distance.

Driver side offsets were a bad type of collision, and they were particularly bad in older body on frame cars before that sort of testing, and when there were a lot of 2 and three lane roads.

I've posted this atrocity [0] before, but it is on point here. This is an offset crash test between the same segment Nissan sold in the US vs the one sold in Mexico. Draw your own conclusions about "car makers don't compromise on safety".

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OysZ_4lp0

Tyler Durden in Fight Club lays our how big companies do sometimes approach these things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club

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