
Tesla earns its first-ever safety award from IIHS for Model 3 - crazy_eye
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/tesla-earns-its-first-ever-safety-award-from-iihs-for-model-3
======
SEJeff
This is the part that gets me:

    
    
        The Institute’s results also demonstrate the exceptional strength of Model 3’s all-glass roof, which is supported by a very strong metal body structure and helps protect occupants in roll-over crashes. During testing, the car’s roof was able to successfully resist more than 20,000 pounds of force – that’s more than if we placed five Model 3s on top of the car’s roof at once. And, the roof earned a higher strength-to-weight ratio score than any other fully electric vehicle that IIHS has ever tested.
    

It takes the weight of ~5 Model 3s ontop of a single one for the glass roof to
shatter. That's good engineering.

~~~
eatbitseveryday
Please do not use code formatting for quotes. It creates a terribly long
unbroken side-scrollable box.

> The Institute’s results also demonstrate the exceptional strength of Model
> 3’s all-glass roof, which is supported by a very strong metal body structure
> and helps protect occupants in roll-over crashes. During testing, the car’s
> roof was able to successfully resist more than 20,000 pounds of force –
> that’s more than if we placed five Model 3s on top of the car’s roof at
> once. And, the roof earned a higher strength-to-weight ratio score than any
> other fully electric vehicle that IIHS has ever tested.

~~~
SEJeff
upvoting you for this. I thought it would break it into a block, and was
wrong.

~~~
SilasX
Wow, and seeing how the post appeared after submitting didn't convince you
otherwise?

~~~
adt2bt
What’s with the attitude? He said he was wrong and the child comment fixed the
issue. No need to castigate him.

~~~
SilasX
Just surprised how people are able to miss this.

SEJeff in particular has been a member since 2012 and has 7500 karma, and
somehow never saw a post that looked unreadable because of blockquote,
including his own.

~~~
skyyler
I hope your mood improves soon. No one should have to be as bitter as you are
right now.

I don't mean this in jest, I really do hope that you find some peace.

------
Abishek_Muthian
I get why Tesla gets the flak from analysts, it being a public company; But I
rarely see an analyst speak about Tesla's impressive record in building safe
cars.

Especially when there are car manufacturers who try to hide flaws which can
lead to catastrophic malfunction or had been caught with cheat devices for
emissions test.

Also one more thing which is less talked about is Tesla's autopilot being
useful for people with disabilities although Tesla hasn't added any specific
features for people with disabilities AFAIK.

~~~
gamblor956
_But I rarely see an analyst speak about Tesla 's impressive record in
building safe cars._

Tesla's car safety features are not a major selling point compared to its EV
features, and moreover are generally features common to EVs (i.e., additional
crumple zones, floor rigidity).

Tesla's autopilot still struggles to identify white trucks against a blue sky,
and highway dividers, and can't seem to tell when the driver is asleep and has
his hands off the wheel. So crash safety features take a back page to known
dangers of Tesla cars that make Teslas more likely to crash than other
vehicles.

 _Especially when there are car manufacturers who try to hide flaws which can
lead to catastrophic malfunction or had been caught with cheat devices for
emissions test._

Literally every newspaper and news organization in the US and Europe covered
the VW emissions scandal. People went to prison over it. Billions of dollars
in fines were paid. The stock price was downgraded by analysts for months.
Ford and GM's stock prices are also down significantly despite near-record
profits due to missteps in the sedan market. Analysts aren't biased against
Tesla, they're biased against any company mis-executing.

~~~
ajross
> make Teslas more likely to crash than other vehicles

Citation needed. Which other vehicles? Tesla's overall safety record is quite
good. Every car has things it does well and things it does badly, and every
_other_ manufacturer gets judged on the safety record on balance.

I mean, do you regularly post on HN about, I dunno, Toyota's safety record
given the high center of gravity of its SUV offerings that make them "more
likely to roll over than other vehicles" and claim that "crash safety features
take a back page" to that problem?

~~~
m463
Well, teslas ARE more likely to crash than commercial airliners, because
"everyone knows you are more likely to die driving to the airport than in the
plane"

Other than that, tesla does publish some data:

[https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport](https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport)

That said, people commonly constrain the Tesla comparisons to newer cars or in
some other way.

~~~
sliken
See wikipedia's "aviation_safety" page. Avaiation is clearly safer per mile (a
factor of 60 or so), but not that much safer per hour (factor of 4 per so),
but is 3 times more dangerous per journey.

So driving to the airport might well be safer than flying across the country
according to the journey metric. Even using the hour metric I often am less
than an hour from the airport and take more than a 4 hour flight.

------
Someone1234
On a slight tangent (although it is mentioned in the linked article) I'm glad
the IIHS started paying more attention to headlights.

For a while there certain vehicle manufacturers were putting design aesthetic
above functional headlights, and even some that didn't had mediocre
headlights.

Since IIHS started dinging vehicles for having bad headlights things seem to
have genuinely improved in a noticeable way. As a driver that has to drive on
the same road as these vehicles (glare/etc) I am happy.

------
thibran
> "Vehicles with alternative powertrains have come into their own," IIHS Chief
> Research Officer David Zuby says. "There's no need to trade away safety for
> a lower carbon footprint when choosing a vehicle."

I would guess this is not the real reason. EV's have a much bigger crumple
zone and can therefor absorb more energy. Since "nobody" wants to hear that
EV's are saver than combustion engine cars, lets put them into another
category...

~~~
erikpukinskis
In the case of Tesla (and presumably other “skateboard” platforms) they also
have an extremely stiff floor, which dramatically improves side impact
performance.

------
S_A_P
The panel gaps allow for greater energy absorption. :) seriously though, I am
glad to see Tesla getting a few wins here as of late. Not a perfect company or
CEO but they are doing a generally great job in my humble opinion.

------
dsfyu404ed
Contrast the good results of the overlap tests with the report (posted on HN
awhile back) from the Tesla that rear-ended the corner of a firetruck at
~35mph that had substantial firewall deformation.

It's worth remembering that modern cars are very highly optimized for the
tests they have to pass. I'm not saying the M3 or any specific car is good or
bad, just take the results with a grain of salt because these metrics are very
much targets.

~~~
dlivingston
I don't think the deformation of that crash is what was relevant; rather, it
appears that autopilot failed to act correctly in that situation.

In terms of the "firewall deformation", from what I understand this is exactly
what is supposed to happen in a collision: there is a "crumple zone" [0] in
modern cars as a safety feature to absorb impact.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumple_zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumple_zone)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The firewall is the edge of the passenger cabin. There should be no crumpling
going on because the perimeter of it is the structural component that ties
together the A-pillars and rocker panel structure. If you crumple the firwall
you are pushing the dash structure back at the occupants and removing support
from the A-pillars allowing them to more easily deform. Getting it to deform
6" or so (I recall that was the number they stated, I'd need to check to be
sure though) in a crash that was well within the range of speeds vehicles are
crash tested at is noteworthy.

Edit: Is the firewall is structurally irrelevant in modern cars or is reality
not convenient today? The inability for people to disagree without trying to
silence each other is why people complain that HN is turning into Reddit.

~~~
FireBeyond
Firefighter / Paramedic here: when we get firewall impingement, we get dash
impingement, which can easily result in us having to "roll" the dash up/off an
occupant to unpin them with our rescue tools. Modern cars shouldn't impinge
the firewall unless many things have gone wrong.

------
baybal2
I put to doubt the utility of crash safety ratings.

The survival rates for collisions on highway speeds are in single digits no
matter what you do. It's just laws of physics.

Modern luxury sedans have 1m+ crumple zones, and those only make for few
percents extra chance at speeds above 60km/h.

Extending crumple zones beyond that is self defeating, as it will only lead to
further increase of average car mass, leading to even more violent collisions

Preventing crashes from happening in the first place is far more economically
efficient. EU is just few years away from making some forms of ADAS mandatory,
and China is realistically talking about centrally controlled "autopilot"
being introduced.

~~~
volkl48
> The survival rates for collisions on highway speeds are in single digits no
> matter what you do.

As in what, a head-on collision between vehicles traveling at 70mph? Yeah,
that's not likely to end well. It's also a highly uncommon event and not what
the safety ratings are testing for, nor is it what anyone is realistically
expecting their car to protect them from.

The small overlap front test is reasonable. It's a 40mph along the outer edges
of the vehicle, like if a passing truck on a local road drifts over the center
line.

~~~
baybal2
For that, sure, but for that even 20 year old cars had good enough structural
integrity. By late nineties Japanese cars were already full in into the
science of crash safety with concepts like safety volumes, and rigidity belts
being fully adopted in mass market cars.

Most advances past that level just got cars getting unreasonably heavy, and
more lethal, as a result, in car to car collisions, which in turn results in
even higher expectations being placed.

That's why "safety marketing" tells only one side of the story.

~~~
djaychela
Sorry, I don't think you're right here.

Modern cars feature considerably more features (both in the bodyshell and in
terms of active safety systems) which protect both passengers and pedestrians.

It's simply untrue to say we reached peak safety 20 years ago and everything
else has just been pointless window dressing.

I buy and sell cars as a side gig, and newer cars (last 10 years or so) are
far better equipped to deal with accidents - they have higher waistlines,
better active safety features (airbags, stability systems, seatbelt pre-
tensioners, lane assist, better-performing ABS systems), and the bodyshells
have features such as side impact bars and larger crumple zones.

I recently bought a Fiat Seicento as a stop-gap. It was really old-school -
light, small, nippy (even with a 55 bhp engine) and great fun to drive. But it
was tragically weak and definitely not safe if you had an accident - as backed
up by Euro NCAP's assessment of the seicento. Cars like that and the original
mini are not something I'd like to have an accident in. (For reference, I did
10 years of gravel rally driving, so I've had a few knocks).

~~~
baybal2
I stand my position here.

While accident rates fell all across the world significantly with advance of
road safety science, and active safety, no question there, but the lethality
of car to car collisions has been rising, _with most of rise happening in
developed countries_

The increase in average car weight is the biggest contributor to lethality of
vehicle to vehicle collision.

[https://www.nber.org/digest/nov11/w17170.html](https://www.nber.org/digest/nov11/w17170.html)
and
[https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/34/1/57/493339](https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/34/1/57/493339)

> being hit by a vehicle that is 1,000 pounds heavier results in a 47%
> increase in the baseline fatality probability.

In three decades, the weight of a family car went from under 1 tonne to close
to 1.6, with big thanks to SUV overtaking sedan as a default "family car."

And increase in car resistance to mechanical deformation no longer plays a big
role when G forces overtake blunt and compression trauma. And there is nothing
one can do about them when crumple zones and the "deceleration track" are
already maxed out.

The last few car fatalities I saw were all about that: 2 cars seemingly intact
besides the front, but both flung violently 10m meters off the road, and
people dead without much signs of external trauma. The energy absorption
capacity of crumple zones did not save them.

~~~
djaychela
Your position seems to have changed - you were initially saying that safety
wasn't improving, and cars of 20 years ago were safe enough. Which is patently
untrue.

Now you're saying that the issue is that car weights have increased.

That's a different argument - and the links that you cite aren't making the
exact point that you are - the 1000lbs/47% figure may well be true, but that's
a difference over 30 years, and both papers are actually talking about
inequality between colliding vehicles.

The tendency to drive SUVs is an issue, for sure, and if you're in a little
car then you don't want to have an accident with a large one where there is a
physical incompatibility, but like all things it has become an arms race - I
wouldn't want to be in a small car of yesteryear on the roads today because
everything modern is bigger - so it's no wonder that people are driving them,
as no-one wants to be in the small vehicle that will come off worst in an
accident.

Your last few fatalities you witnessed are tragic, but anecdotal. I've seen
many situations where people have walked away from accidents that would have
killed them 20 years ago - indeed a couple of weeks ago I witnessed a car get
T-boned by a good vehicle on an A-road in the UK, and everyone got out and
walked away - that certainly wouldn't have happened 20 or more years ago. The
statistics for fatalities in the UK (the only country I have checked) don't
align with your statement that lethality is rising - it isn't in the UK.

