Re: Consumer Reports: Saturn

SMS wrote:
> caviller@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > interested in overall safety, don't simply trust one or two results or
> > anecdotes for a vehicle. The website www.informedforlife.org produces
> > a very good overall rating based on many factors, using published data
> > to produce a risk rating comparable among all vehicles.
>
> Interesting. I did something very similar a few years ago, but I also
> included the insurance industries statistical data as a small percentage
> of the total score. The reason I did that is because there are factors
> that obviously are not factored into the crash testing, because often a
> vehicle with lousy crash test results actually had low injury and
> fatality rates. Part of this is obviously based on the type of person
> that buys a specific vehicle, but part may also be do to handling issues
> not taken into account by crash testing.

Real world injury and fatality rates are useful to some degree. If you
find a vehicle is significantly below average in its class compared to
its competition, that might be a red flag. Hopefully, the driver
demographic for the same class of vehicle doesn't vary as much as it
might from one class to another. It's too bad the real world data is
barely published by the time most vehicles evolve into their next
generation design, making only useful for new vehicles in some cases.
Starting with the latest fatality data released in 2005, the IIHS has
begun to account for some differences in driver characteristics. I
doubt they can completely eliminate the factor of the driver, but it's
good to see that this data will be more meaningful in the future.

It's very difficult to include performance factors like emergency
acceleration, handling and braking into an overall safety rating
comparable across a range of weights and classes. Even if you test
yourself or use numbers from another source, there is more potential
for subjectivity and misleading data based on the element of the
driver. Plus, I don't think I've ever seen any published studies
comparing the benefit of performance features from a crash avoidance
standpoint to the benefit of the vehicle's crashworthiness. Without
that, it would be hard to include them into a composite score in an
objective fashion.

www.informedforlife.org 's approach is very detailed and almost purely
objective. Rather than assigning some seemingly random weighting,
formula or threshold, everything is carefully documented from published
studies. Every other attempt I've seen to make a composite safety
rating has been arbitrary and/or vauge, in some cases perhaps to
intentionally include, exclude or adjust the relative rankings of
specific makes/vehicles. I also like that when a vehicle is missing a
particular result, it is given an average score for that result as a
placeholder. Other publications might assume a top rating to include
such a vehicle in their "Safest" list or omit an otherwise excellent
model because of one missing rating. Consumer Reports tried to make
their own overall safety rating a few years back. As with many of
their ratings, they failed to give the necessary specifics, so it was
hard to say if it was a reasonable effort or not. For whatever
reasons, they no longer publish such a composite, though they do have
safety requirements for recommended models.

This new effort by informedforlife.org is certainly a step in the right
direction, even if it isn't perfect. The IIHS is getting lots of media
attention today with it's brand new top safety picks, while this
unknown website will probably never get a fraction of that publicity.
It seems word of mouth and link exchanges will have to do until the
media takes notice. It's too bad, because using just the IIHS
selections doesn't include the NHTSA crash tests, rollover ratings,
stability control or vehicle weight, all of which are important factors
to an overall safety evaluation as well.

Caviller
http://www.car-safety.org

.

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