On most of today's vehicles, the passenger airbag will not deploy if the passenger's seat is empty. In the IIHS moderate overlap test, only the driver's seat is occupied, so if a vehicle has an automatic passenger airbag cutoff, the passenger airbag should not deploy. If, like most older vehicles, it doesn't, both frontal airbags will deploy.  On more recent tests, IIHS deactivates the passenger airbag themselves if the vehicle they are testing is one of the rare vehicles made today that doesn't have an automatic cutoff. The vast majority of these vehicles are made by Chrysler, now called ..read more

Recently, I analyzed crash test results for 44 vehicles tested by NHTSA and came to the conclusion that a driver airbag, even a first-generation one, was a substantial safety benefit. But what about the then-more controversial passenger airbag? How much did these first-generation passenger airbags help? This analysis included 34 vehicle models tested by NHTSA both with and without passenger airbags. Just like the driver airbag analysis, only models that were not redesigned were included; in other words, they had to be structurally identical. As it turns out, early passenger airbags proved to b ..read more

The driver front airbag has been one of the greatest innovations in frontal crash safety, saving thousands of lives every year. NHTSA's full-frontal crash test, conducted since 1979, is considered a good test of vehicle restraint system effectiveness, namely seat belt and airbag systems. We already know that the time period where frontal airbags were being introduced corresponded to a large improvement in test results. But just how much did the average vehicle improve when a driver airbag was added? For this analysis, I looked at 44 models that were tested by NHTSA both with and without a driv ..read more

The 2007-2012 Toyota Yaris earned respectable crash test ratings for its time; it's not a death trap by any means (as long as you get the side airbags), but a closer look at said crash test ratings shows that it had some definite shortcomings compared to some of its competitors; namely, a weak driver front airbag.  Let's start by looking at the moderate overlap crash test. In this test, which simulates two vehicles of the same weight hitting each other, the driver dummy's head hit the steering wheel through the airbag hard enough to bend the wheel's rim. While the vehicle still scored an ..read more

Back in 2017, I touched on a series of crash tests done by the German TV show Der 7. Sinn in 1982 that were designed to show the benefits of seat belts. But it turns out that wasn't the only time that they put real live human beings in the driver's seats of cars to showcase the benefits of seat belts. They did this on at least three episodes, in 1976, 1982 and 1987.  Let's look at the 1976 episode first. Warning: there is some somewhat graphic content (bloody injuries and naked mannequins) It begins with an announcement that since January 1, 1976, seat belt use has been mandated in Germ ..read more

 Normally, a new vehicle design is put through the crash testing regimens soon after it goes on sale. But nowadays, it seems as if there's a new crash test coming out every couple years. Let's look at what's come out just since 2010: a totally redesigned NHTSA testing protocol with 12-year-old sized dummies in the front passenger seat for the frontal crash test, a NHTSA side pole test, an IIHS small overlap test for both the driver and passenger sides, a tougher IIHS side crash test, and an IIHS moderate overlap crash test with rear seat occupants. That's six new crash tests in 13 years ..read more

The last-generation Chevy C/K truck (before the rename to Silverado), popularly known as the "OBS", launched in the 1988 model year and was produced through 1999, overlapping production with the Silverado for one year.  (Heavy-duty C/K's were produced through 2002, but this post concerns the half-ton versions) The 1988-1991 OBS trucks were already quite safe for their time. A 1988 model earned 3 stars for the driver and 4 stars for the passenger in the NHTSA full-frontal test; however, both of these star ratings were at the very high-end, bordering on 4 and 5 stars respectively. Th ..read more

Mitsubishi never earned a reputation for being particularly safe or unsafe relative to the average vehicle on the market. But, as we covered in a previous Surprisingly Safe post, if you wanted the safest van you could buy in the late 1980s, Mitsubishi was the answer. About two decades later, they would find themselves at the top of their class on safety again, this time in the hotly competitive compact sedan market.  The 2015 Mitsubishi Lancer earned IIHS's Top Safety Pick rating, putting it in the upper echelon of safety in its class for that year. The crash safety of the 2015 Lancer, ho ..read more

It's hard to believe nowadays - especially for someone like me, whose mom owes her life to Honda safety engineering - that Honda was once among the least safe car brands you could buy. And while most Japanese cars were closer to the bottom of the safety rankings in 1979, when the NHTSA 35-mph crash test first came out, but rapidly improved over the course of the 1980s, it was almost as if a switch flipped at Honda as their cars went from death traps to top performers in the span of a few short years.  Let's compare the average severe injury risks of all 1979-1980 cars tested vs. all 1982 ..read more

This post also applies to the Oldsmobile Achieva and last-generation Buick Skylark, which were on the same platform and made the same years as the 1992-1998 Grand Am. Most of the time, when a vehicle was redesigned in the 1990s, it brought a healthy dose of safety progress. The Pontiac Grand Am, with its 1992 redesign, bucked the trend and went backwards. The 1985-1991 Grand Am scored a very respectable 4 stars for the driver and 5 stars for the passenger in a 35-mph full frontal crash test conducted on a 1987 model.  But when the redesigned '92 Grand Am - tested as its platform mate, the ..read more