Auto safety is not limited to defensive driving on the road. Purchasing a safe vehicle can reduce accidents and injuries. The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety recommends looking for the following safety factors when choosing your next vehicle:
- Vehicle structural design is the starting point for protecting you in a serious crash. A good structural design should have a strong occupant compartment, or safety cage, and front and rear ends designed to buckle and bend in serious crashes to absorb crash forces. It's important for these crush zones to keep damage away from the safety cage because, once this cage begins to collapse, the likelihood of injury increases rapidly. If it's effectively designed, a longer crush zone lowers both the likelihood of damage to the occupant compartment and the crash forces inside it.
- Vehicle size and weight are important characteristics that influence crashworthiness. The laws of physics dictate that, all-else being equal, larger and heavier vehicles are safer than smaller and lighter ones. In relation to their numbers on the road, small cars have more than twice as many occupant deaths each year as large cars.
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- Restraint systems - used in combination, they provide maximum safety. Look for belts that have shoulder strap adjustments to accommodate people of varying heights. Lap belts should fit low and snug across the pelvis
- Head restraints - are required in the front seats of all new passenger vehicles to keep your head from snapping back, injuring your neck in a rear-end crash. But all head restraints aren't the same. Some are adjustable while others are fixed. Head restraints also vary in height and how far they're set back from the head. To prevent neck injury, a head restraint has to be directly behind and close to the back of your head. Make sure the ones in a car you're considering for purchase can be positioned this way. And if the restraints are adjustable, make sure they lock when adjusted. Some don't, which means they could be pushed down in a crash. More...
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