They don't want to show you the crash because you'll see that the S class had almost 2 feet longer to decelerate than the Smart did. Meaning the occupants in the S class would've had a far less "splat" stop.
It's the instant high G-force that kills you, S class has a big nose, which bends intentionally to absorb all the forces, smart car may look "ok" after the crash but having a small and stiff metal body that doesnt bend puts a lot of forces on the driver so you'll end up with a lot of internal bleedings after the crash and die
What you don't realize is that the smart would also be slowed down by the crumple zone of the S class, so what you said is not true in this case, however, if hitting a concrete wall you would be right. Also, the change in speed would be greater in the smart since it weights less.
+Urban Chaos 2.0 the smart may be more rigid and look a lot better than the mercedes, but rigid structures make harder impacts, the looks doesn't matter too much, but yeah i think the mercedes has a better chance to survive
Let's hear about the G-Forces involved. In at least one test (found on RU-vid) of a Smart Car hitting a concrete barrier at 50mph, the doors stayed shut etc., but the G-Forces were unsurvivable by a human
highest momentarily G-Force any human experienced ever was ~214G. I belive you won't be aple to go close to this with Smart Car, as it was achived by IndyCar Series 2003 Kenny Bräck's Crash
@@qayray please consider that this video is a Daimler ad, so its probably biased towards their cars, also they never specify the actual g-forces(or spike) experienced by the occupants.
The didn't even show the end result of the crash test for either car! All we see is the cars starting to hit, then flash camera to the wrecked cars sitting in the distance. Why hide the full length of the car crash unless it wasn't as "good" as you make it believe. Be Smart.....don't drive a Smart.
Thats a thing your cabin did not collide, but the G forces will be much higher ,than in a regular car. In a smart there is basicly a 40cm collapse zone, but in a "real" car there are much more space to collapse, so the G forces will be lower. So the Smarts are not "very very safe", they are just okay.
Groupcraft65 you are completely missing the point , the car might maintain its shape , but the driver wont Any crash needs to be cushioned or the vehicle occupants suffer multiple crashes , notice how the dummy head goes straight to the car pillar bypassing the airbags ( uncut video ) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sKSPxQjPOm0.html
This film hides the truth! Shows the action just till the Smart looses its speed. But doesn't shows the most important, after the crash, Smart flies back, the S class continues its way in original direction! S class looses cca -25, 30 km/h of its speed, Smart looses -75-80! That is the difference! Never forget, cars knows much better the fizik, than we! I=m x v
Totally agree... Plus Mercedes Benz vehicles are designed so that the crumple zones help the passengers in the other car survive too. So one of the reasons the smart fared so well is because it was crashed into an S class. If this were two Smart Cars colliding, the results would be far far worse.
SIMcityplayer2002 actually A smart is a Mercedes with another badge on it, simply because putting the Mercedes badge on it would be humiliation for Mercedes, plus they had to put a bigger price tag on it.
Another truth is that while the passenger compartment of the smart car stays intact the passengers experience much higher g forces in a crash. Not really the cars fault, there's just not as much room for crumple zones in something that small.
Yeah but the slow-mo shows the smart instantly stopping whereas the S class slows a much smoother way. This means that the crash is more violent in the Smart: a greater force is exerted on the passengers in order to slow them fast. The longer the hood, the softer the deceleration...
The s class was still going forward when the smart already went backwards! Maybe the passenger cell is intact but your guts would fly out on your mouth in a smart
@@lunakon5911 Long after you die your account will still exist and people will respond to your comments and you won't answer and they will think "why don't they respond ?".
"The forces on the occupants were significantly less than the bio-mechanical limits." Oh wow you've sold me! My head will still be intact, it just won't work anymore? I guess it's a smart car if safety is not your priority.
Would like to know the impact speed and occupant g-forces experienced. At 0:50 the Smart stops moving, whilst the S class is still travelling, so Smart will have experienced greater g to stop. I have no doubt it can pass the safety tests, but I still know which I'd rather be in when the worst happens.
I was a State Trooper in a southern state (US)... Worked a wreck on the interstate involving a smart car. It was single vehicle. The woman rolled it trying to merge onto the intestate. Looked almost identical to this vehicle. She had her seatbelt on but somehow the top of her head came out the sunroof. It scalped her. Her dog was ejected and broke his jaw. The dog survived and so did she. The car rolled 3-4 times, looked like a crushed coke can.
You don't even need to see how it ended - it's not that they can't make a car that will stay "intact" after the crash. To reduce the g-forces on the driver/passengers, structure of a car MUST be designed so it gives way upon impact. Longer engine bay (more room to slow down) means lower g-force on the driver (higher potential for survival). Smart barely has any room for deceleration, so its structure has to be tougher in order to protect the cabin, which means that the driver of the smart car will experience much higher g-forces and is less likely to survive. Smart car may look like new after the crash but that doesn't mean that the driver will look as good as the car. It's neccessary for a car's structure to crumple in case of a high speed crash - that's how it saves your life. It's not how good a car looks like after the crash that tells you how safe it is and unfortunately a lot of people fall for this and that's exactly what they want you to believe when you watch this video. Smart car has its benefits but safety is not one of them - simple physics.
Also, a heavier car will decellerate more slowly than a lighter car because of inertia. All things being equal, a heavier car will be safer than a lighter car.
That's 90% of every modern vehicle. Except that fact that every other vehicle actually has a crumple zone that is designed to crush so your internal organs don't take the impact, unlike the "smart".
Since the Smart came to the US (early 2000s) there's only been a small number of fatalities within the SMART realm. Thousands of people die every year in car accidents, the Smart is obviously not immune to this. The only difference really is the crumple zone (and the weight) other cars have VS the smart. Sure you might seriously some injure some limbs but your likelihood of dying is fairly small. And honestly, if you're on a motorcycle your likelihood is high as well.
Keith The smart has no crumple zones as its too small to include them. Put a meter inside the test dummies head and see if the driver wouldn't have suffered brain damage.
Yes, I’d like to see photos of the Smart’s interior, and the dummy’s legs. Paused at 0:48 it looks like the Merc’s nose is pushing into the Smart’s rigid shell and tilting the Smart upwards, so Merc’s bonnet would go into Samar’s windscreen & through the airbag. So no legs, and no head either ☹️
I drive the Smart every day in Belgium, Germany, Netherlands. The safety cell makes it a little tank. 130 km/h for three hours and feeling safe is normal praktice for me. The negative comments are from people who never drove the little beauty. Notice I am a former Saab driver 👍
I think SAABs were in a different place to all other manufacturers with regards to safety. This crazy little car should be speed limited, as incompatible with most other vehicles. Safety cage is not going to save occupants
Always amazed as an accident investigator the strength of Smart Cars. Only issue in "real world" crashes are the ping pong effects. What happens after the impact. The cars dynamics of being outweighed and "sent" flying.
RU-vid Admin That smart not only lost it's forward momentum when it impacted the merc (which weighs more than 2X as much), it probably gained some backwards momentum as well. Sure, the passenger compartment held up, it will be easier to remove the corpses that experienced well over deadly G-force.
My uncle is part of clean up and was called to remove a body in a Car crash, he didn't see anything until they moved the two SUVs to reveal a smart wedged between them
Khaled AlHouli precisely! They must have had something to hide and they figured: "Ah, those idiots would never notice, we'll show them the opposite side of the crash. Lol
+CHL41993 I wonder if we can find the full video somewhere. There is one very look alike in youtube but it's made with an older smart and an older mercedes..
Yes, but it is betweem the old C-Class and the old Smart, this one are the new models. Here we can see how the smart cheats and use the crumple zone of the C-Class to pass the test lol.
I watched a test done by fifth gear the body is incredibly stiff and the shell was intact at high speed. But being so stiff would cause serious internal injuries
The idea is that the Smart uses the crumple zones of the opposing vehicle to reduce the forces (the 5th gear test was against a concrete block which had no crumple zone). Of course, this trick doesn't work if the Smart hits another Smart (or something that uses the same design philosophy). In that case they may as well hit the concrete block, where the car stays reasonably intact and the occupants become sauce all over the interior.
You can see clearly at 0:40 how much the mercedes pushed into the smart and the movement had probably not ended there. It´s for sure that the driver of the smart wouldn´t have survived that crash. The two cars are too far apart from each other when they "tested" the door as well. Test result => failed! Driver => dead!
At 00:50 / 00:51 they show the right side of the Smart. Watch at slowest speed. Earlier, the left door is clearly damaged & around 00:40 you can see the wing mirror being crumpled as the door column is pushed in. At 00:53, after handshakes, that looks like it’s a different car from another test run.
Pretty interesting. We didn’t see one piece of evidence that this “amazing safety standard” smart car held up well for any occupants. Mostly just people walking around smh
@ Branden van der Merwe they are pretty safe, I know people who have survived quite dangerous crashes against larger cars. They’re just a niche product.
In the smart goes from 50km/h to 0 in 0,01sec lol while in mercedes seems like it will keep going after the crash, so all the organs in the smart are fucked up
The deceleration must be as slow as possible. The smart car's cage stays intact, but that does not help. The massive brain injury is from the brain hitting the inside of the skull. Not from anything hittng the skull on the outside.
Joaquin Carrillo the smart stopped so hard the headlamp flew off its socket. Either they used some cheap zipties to hold it in place or thats the perfect example of what will happen to your eyes in the event.
Smarts frame is very stiff but it is still not as safe as a normal size car. Try to hit a pillow with your hand and then hit a wooden chair. The pillow will be slowing down your hand after it becomes stationary. Now the chair will stop it almost instantly. That is also how car crashes work. Of couse air bags will help a lot but Smart will never be as safe as an S-class merc.
The ONLY thing that allows for possible survivability for the Smart car occupants is the cars light weight. Park the Smart car 2 ft behind a dump truck, then run the S class into the rear of it at 100kph. Run the test again with the Smart car and S class roles reversed. In the real world, little/light cars do NOT do well (in accidents) while traveling on roads with larger/heavier vehicles. Mass and inertia is a critical factor on public roads.
Drew the structure is actually really tough for a small car, it can survive anything in a city. But on the autobahn at high speed you got no chance tough ahaha
Nate Ksr not really man , i just saw a mustang hit one of these cars at 40- 50 mph and that little car flew and the lady in the car was pretty messed up
Benito Ocampo I'm kinda shocked they got rid of the solid real axle not that long ago, after DECADES OF dangerously unstable Mustangs. It made them EXTREMELY prone to fishtail for NO reason. On DRY pavement. I've seen it, and I came close to doing that myself in one. I don't effing trust car companies, ESPECIALLY Ford (the Pinto). They put them out KNOWING they'll kill someone, or a lot of them. The 1.90 they "save" to.not fix them is more important.
In the smarts manual it says that it activates the other cars crash zone. How is it going to activate the trees crash zone or the walls crash zone? One thing I know for sure. If you want to meet me, drive smart!
What they don’t show in this video, is how the Smart bounced back after impact. That happened with a Smart and a C-class, on a video here on YTube. Imagine how an S-class would push it back with that big mass.
The S Class has a design feature that Upon a crash the suspension raises protect it's passengers and dooming the peasants that dared to cross its path.
dangerous, impractical off the golf courses. One hit from something significant and the Smart ends up in perfect condition hanging from a tree limb due to no weight.
I don't know if the Mitsubishi that you are referring to is available in the US, but with the average weight of a car in the US weighing about 1.5 tons and up, these cars are just ridiculous and have no place here in the US EXCEPT for basic commuting very very short distances and tooling around the metro areas where parking can be a major issue. Also with pick up trucks here weighing in at 5000 pounds or 2.5 tons, Semi trucks at 80 thousand pounds, buses at 25 thousand pounds, the Smart needs to be smart and get the hell out of this country.
Well, having been in a smart for two that was rear ended by a pickup truck I can vouch for it's ability to survive. The impact bent the frame of the pickup, I drove the smart for the remainder of the day, didn't even break the rear glass. Oh, did it fly like a golf ball? No.The energy absorbed by both vehicles crumple zones did their jobs. I coasted to the side of the road because the car had shut itself off and turned on the hazard lights. I still have the smart, it's a 2005 diesel.
Audi A7 2016 and newer GMC sierras have eqivalent ratings to smart cars in all areas tested, and the smart cars (for reasons of inadequacy i suspect) are not tested for headlights, head restraint and small overlap front impact. if you want to get whiplash bouncing off a Sierra, be my guest. a 100km/h impact will feel like a ~150km/h crash to the smart car, and you have one third the crumple zone. And I have no fucking clue where you got the idea that trucks are 1 or 2 stars. i looked, and no utility/pickup vehicles i found have been given less than three stars since 2013. and both models of smart car only have 4/5 star euro ncap, so that's bullshit as well.
The f 350 would never make it to the test facility because in typical ford fashion it'd break down before it got there and the driver of the peterbuilt wouldn't be interested. He'd be parked up at a diner eating a quadruple cheeseburger
I never understood the metal box that forms the smartcar's cab... sure it's tough... but if it's so tough wouldn't too much energy be transferred to the occupants?
Here's a recommendation: don't use Smart cars for highway driving. You'd likely survive a crash if it was driven in a city with tight streets or simply to get around a very small town.
For a car that doesn't look safe, it sure does have a pretty good safety cage. Yeah, the Smart Fortwo is pretty cute and has a niche appeal to American and Canadian consumers. But, it doesn't look like a safe car. The Ford Crown Victoria most definitely looks like a safe car and, it is pretty safe. It has SUV safety without the high center of gravity. Believe me, Crown Vics save lives all of the time. I'm actually impressed with how car safety has evolved for the Smart Fortwo itself. It just goes to show that the world of car safety is evolving every day.
28 mph? also take it off the cables. The initial controlled crash it may hold up. Once that car flies 20 yards the opposite way and bounces 10 times it's not so safe anymore.
First impact is always the greatest and it's rare for cars to crash at higher speeds because people react and brake. Even larger cars are not safe at 60 mph impacts.
royaloreca You said they wouldn't survive. Of course they would be injured, an accident at a few miles per hour can cause some minor injuries. My mother hit a pole going well over the speed limit on a highway when I was a kid. She's still alive and well with the only trace of the accident left being a metal plate in her left ankle. I guarantee you if she had driven a Smart car she would be dead.
vern fierce a 350 is top-heavy. Weight will NOT be in your favor if it flips for no real reason. I favor a big sedan, but that's no guarantee because Ford is STILL putting gas tanks in dangerous places, just like the Pinto, on large sedans. They're not the only ones, Jeep did the same thing. The car can't be dropped on the roof from.a foot off the ground. It will crush to the hood. Rolling over is out of the question. Sometimes, this fun scenario is combined with seat belt failures at the same time: comes apart during impact, doesn't lock, rips in half... "Still unsafe at any Speed," Brian Chase. Part that keeps me up.nights is just about ALL major car makers have been sued repeatedly for stupid issues like this, which they KNEW about long before you were paralyzed or killed. They chose to do NOTHING.
That small one, for being small is quite heavy, my old car, a Mazda 323 hatchback from -96 weighed like 960-990kg, my current car, a L-200 pickup truck from -92 weigh 1400kg. Quite heavy for such a tiny vehicle
So this thing gets 36 MPG combined… I figure given how much you sacrifice on size, it should have some incredible fuel efficiency, but 36 MPG is not worth it given its size. I'll buy a Prius or C-Max if I'm concerned about fuel.
Yeah, you don't buy it because of MPG. You buy it because you can get in every freakin parking spot. That's it. That what it was made for. I can see that they aren't that succesful in North America, your parking spots are huge and there are plenty of them. Also way less parallel parking needed than here in Europe (where the Smart really shines, because it sometimes can even park vertical in horizontal parking spots)
J/K of course. A local farm equipment dealer here tried to bring them to local market. They sold exactly zero and still drive the one they imported as an advertisement/demo back in 2008. It's sad really. Yeah these cars are around and you occasionally see one but nobody around here is willing to die for that cause. And normal sedan is just as fuel efficient these days.
