Gentlemen:
Perhaps you can help me! I have been scouring the Internet and the paper looking for car safety reports and have found it difficult comparing similar-year autos. How does one compare cars?
We have always been Volvo owners because of the safety factors; now we're not so sure if it is the best choice.
My husband is interested in buying a new auto and he is interested in the Volvo V70, the Mercedes E-class and the BMW 5-Series. All 2006 models.
How can I compare these to see which is the safest vehicle? Or is the Audi A6 the safest? I would like some guidance.
Thanks in advance,
Lynne
Vaughan: Oh, Lynne, now you've done it. The theory of relativity would be easier to explain. Safety ratings to me are what the Russians were to Churchill: "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
Cato: Very scholarly, Vaughan. But, Lynne, he has a point. As far back as 1996, the U.S. Transportation Research Board recommended that all vehicles receive a single, simple-to-understand safety score -- a kind of summary score. Now that was a good idea.
Vaughan: But Cato, you know that if governments are involved, good ideas are doomed. Our wonderful federal government, for example, crashes cars all the time yet doesn't release any sort of crash test scores at all. What's the point of that? And down in the United States, with all its high-priced government testing, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it has no plans to develop a summary safety score.
Cato: It's definitely not easy to rate vehicles in terms of overall safety; in fact I'd say it's getting tougher. Since 1996 NHTSA has added side-impact scores and rollover resistance ratings to frontal-impact test results. A fully tested vehicle now receives five sets of stars. Five sets! Five sets with the best score being five stars. So for a perfect NHTSA score, a vehicle gets a total of 25 stars.
Vaughan: And now NHTSA is thinking of adding star ratings for brake performance and maybe headlights and whiplash protection, too. That's a lot of categories and a lot of stars to keep track of, especially when you never know what kind of crash you're going to be in.
Cato: And that's why I think Lynne would be very smart to turn to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) for the most useful safety scores.
Vaughan: Cato, you trust the research arm of the auto insurance industry in the U.S. more than big-brother government?
Cato: In the case of safety ratings, the IIHS does some things better -- rating vehicles in tests of high-speed offset frontal impacts, severe side impacts and for whiplash protection. I also like the way the IIHS Web site (http://www.hwysafety.org) explains its methodology.
Vaughan: And there's enough information there that, with a bit of digging, buyers can understand various safety attributes.
Cato: Still, to be fair, NHTSA's Web site (http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/testing/ncap) is loaded with explanations of what the scores mean. And that site also has tire ratings, another useful bit of safety info.
Vaughan: There you are flip-flopping, Cato. Is it NHTSA or the IIHS?
Cato: With me it's 1 and 1A, with the IIHS slightly ahead. I'm giving the IIHS the edge because, unlike NHTSA, the insurance industry folks have somehow managed to come up with a single safety rating - something the government agency hasn't been able to do.
Vaughan: So it's the Insurance Institute over the government, right? The institute does things to help people like Lynne who are baffled by the overload of vehicle safety ratings.
