I recently heard a weird story. A guy just bought a new Fiat Linea, and drives out of the showroom with his family. And hits a lorry straight away. His bad luck worsens when that lorry happens to carry granite slabs. Not too happy with the crash, the lorry dumps some of its cargo on top of the car. But guess what, inspite of those massive granite slabs, none of the passengers have even a scratch to report. The car was totalled, but the people saved. He was so happy with the car that he bought another one right away!
A happy ending, then. The world is now a safer place to live, cars were never this good, end of the story. Not quite. You see, all of this safety bishbosh has come at a pretty big cost.
You may know the Hyundai Getz. It was introduced as a modern 'European' car, with all the modern safety features, a light but strong body, a highly efficient engine, blah blah blah. You will also know of the Ambassador. The longest selling car in history (over 50 years), its called the grandpa' car, a massive behemoth of steel that's widely considered to be the most outdated car sold anywhere.
Now comes the funny part. The petrol Ambassador gets 12 km per litre overall. Do you know how much the Getz gets? A humongous 11 km/l. That's right. A small modern 'hatchback' gets lower fuel economy than an antiquated Grandpa car. Wanna know why? Its this thing called weight. The two cars in question weigh exactly the same! 1050 kg. The difference in fuel consumption is bcoz of the engine in the Getz, which is too 'European' to run properly in our traffic conditions. You would have guessed where this is going. But hold on, before you lash out on me for not caring about human lives, let me tell you this. I'm not against those electronic thingys like ABS, traction control and those things, they add just about 50 kilos. Acceptable. I'm not even against those front & side crash tests. Their weight addition is perfectly ok since they actually save lives on a consistent basis.
Its those safety authorities. The ones called EuroNCAP, especially. They started out rating cars in terms of their safety in 1997, and since they were EURO-backed, customers started taking their safety ratings seriously. A great thing, since it spurred manufacturers to come up with all the electronic gizmodos and improve crash safety spectacularly. The NCAP test gives up to 5 stars, and within 4 years, almost every car sold in Europe, and the equivalent ones in US, got full marks. So almost all cars sold in the western nations were perfectly safe.
What would a teacher do if all her students got good marks? Pat them in the back and congratulate them, right? Not in this case. Since manufacturers wanted a longer fight and the NCAP guys wanted to be in business for a longer period, the tests were made a whole lot tougher. Cars which got 5 stars were now getting only 2. New tests took care of cases where cars were crashed from their side, hit from the back (common in Europe), when they rolled over(!), and when they passengers in the front. They may even think of cases where they hit passengers in the side and back, effectively turning the car into a jelly-shaped blob. But enough of that now.
The main problem is that adding all those safety features also added tons of weight. If a new car, say, a Honda Jazz were to be entirely made of steel, it would weigh nearly 50% more. Extra layers of metal were added to the front, the doors, the roof and boot to meet these safety norms, and they had to compensated with other costly materials. For example, the Hyundai i10 has some Titanium coated parts for its engine. As you'll know, Titanium is more expensive than gold! This leaves us with cars that are heavier, more expensive, and normally less fuel-efficient than before. New engines can improve mileage, but they are simply a lot more expensive.
There are a few more issues. Each country (and state sometimes) in the world has different safety requirements, and they are all almost mandatory now. Which is fine if people specifically made cars for them. But our carmakers are too lazy to do that, focussing on global cars instead. So, the Suzuki SX4 sold here also takes care of Icelandic slalom tests, while handling 100 km/hr crash tests in Europe. And it is sold here where we hardly take it over 60. Great going. And EuroNCAP is going for another set of revisions, since all cars are getting 5 stars again.
Here are a few facts:
The Hyundai i10 gets to do the same type of tests that a Honda City is subject to. And it gets almost the same stars
The Suzuki Ritz would have weighed and cost the same as a WagonR AND made 25 kmpl if it had not been subject to the 2005 NCAP revisions
Fuel economy(kmpl) has actually dropped when comparing 1975 cars with 2005 ones
Am I saying cars should be made like Ambassadors again? Or that crash testing is useless? No way! Its just that making every car meet every kind of scenario (with a probability of 1 in a million) is just too much. Our cars are safe enough now. We'll have them the way they are, thank you very much. No need to add any more weight in the name of safety. We can have safer roads instead. Easier on our pockets too..
PS: I'm leaving town (and possibly the net) for my job, and so will be off for a while. Hopefully, i'll return soon with some more wacky topics. Thanks a ton for backing me up thus far. Ciao..:)
