The Smart ForTwo is the reknowned Daimler product commonly referred to as "The Smart Car". A two-passenger, rear-wheel drive auto, the ForTwo is among the tiniest production cars ever seen on American roads.
The EPA rates the Smart vehicle at 36 miles-per-gallon (combined city and highway driving), barely beating the Obama administration's recent directive of 35.5 MPG for entire auto fleets by 2016.
Put simply, Obama and the Democrats want you and your family driving in these unsafe vehicles.
Oh, don't get me wrong, Smart Cars have performed reasonably well in some controlled tests.
Crash tests have shown that the Smart, while having little in the way of crumple zones, has performed better than might otherwise be expected. That said, NHTSA's testing group gave the ForTwo mediocre marks in both frontal passenger protection as well as rollover. It awarded the vehicle its highest score in exactly none of the testing categories.
As for those big government Statists (AKA "Democrats") who say, "well, there won't be any SUVs in the future", I simply ask: will there be tractor-trailers? Pickup trucks and heavy vans for business? If so, the physical mismatch between these types of vehicles endangers anyone inside the rolling death traps.
In January of this year, The Seymour Herald reported on one such encounter, which -- fortunately -- was not a fatal accident.
A two-vehicle collision on Chapman Highway Monday afternoon stalled traffic for at least an hour near Shiloh Church Road.
According to the Tennessee Highway Patrol, Teresa Melas, 41, of Knoxville, received non-life threatening injuries in the accident. She was driving a Mercedes-Benz Smart car that was traveling west on Chapman Highway.
Melas was removed from the car with the Jaws of Life, and was flown to an area hospital by a Lifestar helicopter, which landed on Chapman Highway at the intersection of Shiloh Church Road.
...Rupprecht, who had recently returned home from basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., said he was driving a white | Direct Links | Movies world | Software world | Download PC Games | Mediafire Links | Celebrity PicturesChevy Camaro in the right westbound lane of Chapman Highway when the tiny car driven by Melas passed his car and clipped its front driver’s side tire.
“She was going really fast and when she hit his front wheel, her car came around in front of us and she hit the embankment and turned over,” said Ranieri. “It scared us, because her car went way up in the air and we were afraid it would land on us.”
[Passenger] Ranieri said she looked in the mirror and saw Melas’s car flip over several times behind them. Ranieri said it scared her because the car was lightweight and “flying like paper.”
In another instance, reported on AutoBlog Green:
...While driving along on I-95 in Connecticut at 70 mph, a [Smart Car] driver who goes by the name of "evilbean42" on the Smart Car of America forum (SCOA), was on the receiving end of a bump from a car which had been bumped by a car which had veered from the exit lane into the next, somewhat occupied, lane...
The momentum sent the Smart into the guard rail off of which it bounced "like a ping pong ball" and rolled three times back across the highway into the opposite guardrail whereupon it righted itself. The seat-belted evilbean42 opened the door and emerged unscathed, thanks to his Smart friend.
And this Edmunds reporter's eight-year old daughter intuitively knows that riding in a Smart Car is, well, dumb.
Although I'm not exactly keen on strapping my life's most precious cargo into the Smart's passenger seat, I have on occasion offered to take my eight-year-old daughter for a ride around the block just so she could see what the diminutive ForTwo feels like...
She vehemently refuses. Just doesn't seem safe, she says... She's always happy to pose in the Smart Fortwo, just don't ask her to ride in it.
While there are still very few Smart ForTwo's on American roads, other "fuel-efficient vehicles" have proven exceedingly poor performers when matched against larger vehicles.
This photo depicts a fatal accident in which an undersized gas-sipper (not a ForTwo) met up with a semi.
And these photographs illustrate an SUV and a normal-sized sedan after they smashed into each other. The driver of the SUV was unharmed while, tragically, the driver of the sedan was killed by the impact.
Knowledgeable commenters at Reddit observed the crash test footage and noted that the "Smart ForTwo has a tiny crumple zone, and as a result it's coming to a much more violent stop at the end. Notice how the rear end of the vehicle comes flying up off the ground."
The fact about the ForTwo is simple - there just aren't enough of them driving around right now to determine what actually happens. Far fewer of them have been in serious accidents. However... "In the 40-mile-per-hour frontal collision into a stationary barrier, Institute president Adrian Lund stated "We recorded a high head acceleration when the driver dummy's head hit the steering wheel through the front airbag." For responders, his indicates that the institute's test dummy used up all of the available ride down room in the Smart's seatbelt system and interior space as the crash occurred."
The test dummy hit the steering wheel THROUGH the airbag in a 40 MPH crash test. 'the crash test engineers also noted that during the collision, the driver's door unlatched. This also occurred during side-impact crash testing conducted by the NHTSA."
Still feel safer in that little Smart ForTwo? Personally, I think the thing is a little deathtrap but like I said, not enough of them have been wrecked to see. I have seen people driving them like complete assholes, though. Speeding through traffic and cutting into small holes that the ForTwo's size allows for, so it oughta be pretty soon...
And given the fact that modern SUV bumper levels are about shoulder-high for a typical Smart Car occupant, well, the results of a high-speed impact won't be pretty.
Protect your family. Protect your children. Say "Hell, no!" to the Statists that want to control the size of the cars you can buy, what types of lightbulbs are legal, how much water you can flush, and every other trivial aspect of your life. Say no to the Corpulent Government Democrats.
So now the democrats are responsible for smart cars? I like how you took a personal saftey issue and turned it into a "democrats are bad" post. Some spin you got there. Anyone who looks at the car can tell they aren't going to fare well against a semi (neither is a motorcycle or just abiut anyother car), but how is that a partisan political issue? I think you a reaching in your attemp to trash democrats. But again, to the supposed topic of the post, the cars do not look safe and I wouldn't buy one.
ReplyDeleteTwo Sentz said...
ReplyDeleteSo now the democrats are responsible for smart cars? I like how you took a personal saftey issue and turned it into a "democrats are bad" post. Some spin you got there. Anyone who looks at the car can tell they aren't going to fare well against a semi (neither is a motorcycle or just abiut anyother car), but how is that a partisan political issue? I think you a reaching in your attemp to trash democrats.
I got enough or your attention that you posted :P
But is it not the dems that want super green vehicles?
was it not hussein obama that has given an all out tax break to those who buy golf carts?
Is it not hussein obama that is replacing government fleet vehicles with these terribly unsafe death traps?
I see. So it's not even about democrats. It about your hatred of "Hussein" Obama. Well, good luck with that. You are in for a long eight years.
ReplyDeleteTwo Sentz said...
ReplyDeleteI see. So it's not even about democrats. It about your hatred of "Hussein" Obama. Well, good luck with that. You are in for a long eight years.
6:01 PM
nope no hate, just not my kind of person. I do hope he does well for all our sake.
Back to the Green car, you can't say that the dems do not want this little golf cart on the road. They have banned the hummer,(?) and the most unreasonable libs even stalk the larger SUV's and vandalize them.
on another note, I was up your way today. We made a special trip just to go to Ponzettiis (sp) for pizza, I have one son that swears that's the best pizza in the world, I must say I agree.
I cant speak for everyone but I personally dont car if these cars are on the road or not. Why shouldn't they be allowed, like Hummers? Ive never heard of them being banned. Never heard of people stalking and vandalizing suvs either. I dont think you can draw any generalizations about democrats from it though.
ReplyDeletena, it's definitely NOT all dems, it's the extreme liberals like say code pink.
ReplyDeleteand yes about the hummer, obama ordered a stop on production of the hummer a week or so ago. I have no problem with those itsy bitsy cars on the road either. I have a problem with the left making me drive one. Look up what you get the $5000 credit toward if you destroy your gas guzzler.
Is the left 'making you drive one' or are they paying you a $5000 credit if you choose to buy one? Those credits always come with some restrictions.
ReplyDeletewell it's like everything else sentz
ReplyDeletethey WILL find a way to take away what we want, by extra taxes etc. look at the GPS's they want installed to tax how many miles we drive.
Yes it's the left that robs our freedoms of choice, always, the list is endless, and now they are working on what we drive.
I think those cars are the ugliest thing. The first time I saw one was in MA on a business trip. I busted out in laughter cause I thought at first it was a joke.
ReplyDeleteI don't see it as a partisan issue (but yes, i do agree that CARS was a bad idea). In a free-enterprise society you should be able to sell and buy what you want. When a need comes for something someone will sell it. Is it a liberal thing to drive motorcycles? Those are small, fuel-efficient, and a lot less safe to drive than a smart. My wife and I have two smarts but its not because we are raging liberals. We live in a cramped city, where parking is expensive. We have one carport and both fit in there. We also find a lot more parking when we go out than people with normal cars. Oh yea, and they are FUN. I personally enjoy driving mine.
ReplyDeleteAs for safety, by far the most common fatal accident is a side-collision (side on is roughly 20%, head-on is roughly 2%), which the smart performs very well in--better than many larger cars. That test is with the same simulated F-150 hitting it side-on. In its first two years, the smart has been slightly less fatal than most other models (including much larger ones like the F150). Both of the examples you show have the drivers surviving, and the only fatal image is of a VW Crossfox in another country. A smart owner in that crash surely would have died too, but probably so would a Hummer driver. Google-image-search for "hummer schoolbus crash".
I'm not dissing the Hummer. It is a niche car that some people enjoy driving and may serve a purpose that other cars can't (like the smart). Any car hitting a much larger object (Semi, train, bus, etc) head on is going to be a mess. It comes down to your driving. If you have an armored Volvo and you drive at high speeds while drinking coffee and talking on your phone you are more likely to die than if you drive responsibly in a Tata Nano.
And if you have small children, put them in the back seat. Front airbags can mess a kid up. The smart does not have back seats, so don't put small children in it. Same goes for a single-cab pickup or a corvette.
The only advantage to those cars that I can see is that they're easy to park. Otherwise...my TDI Golf gets 45 MPG, and it's not even a hybrid.
ReplyDeleteIt's idiotic to say that "Obama wants us to drive these cars". Yeah, Obama wants vehicles to get higher mileage. What sane person wouldn't?
Sure, I understand the viewpoint that we should all have the right to drive 1 MPG Landcrushers if we want, as a matter of personal liberty. Ignoring that use of oil pollutes the air and water and drains a finite resource, the problem is that the US Gov't is and has for a long time been involved in securing us the cheap oil that's mainly deposited in other countries.
I'll give you unregulated mileage if you'll agree that the US gov't won't spend a dime on keeping the cheap oil flowing. Sound fair?