Small Cars Are More Dangerous

I'm amazed that this got printed in the New York Times, but nevertheless, here you go (emphasis mine):

Consumers who buy minicars to economize on fuel are making a big tradeoff when it comes to safety in collisions, according to an insurance group that slammed three minimodels into midsize ones in tests.

In a report prepared for release on Tuesday, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said that crash dummies in all three models tested — the Honda Fit, the Toyota Yaris and the Smart Fortwo — fared poorly in the collisions. By contrast, the midsize models into which they crashed fared well or acceptably. Both the minicars and midsize cars were traveling 40 miles per hour, so the crash occurs at 80 m.p.h.

The institute concludes that while driving smaller and lighter cars saves fuel, "downsizing and down-weighting is also associated with an increase in deaths on the highway," said Adrian Lund, the institute's president.

"It's a big effect — it's not small," he said in a telephone interview.

...

The argument over weight versus safety is not a new one but took on greater significance when gasoline prices rose sharply last year, making minicars more popular. Consumers also seek out vehicles that burn less fuel so they will contribute less to global warming. Production of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas, is proportional to fuel use, and the Smart claims to be the highest-mileage car powered by gasoline on the American market.

When the institute crashed the Smart into the Mercedes C-Class sedan, the Smart, which weighs half as much as the sedan, went airborne and spun around one and a half times. The institute's crash laboratory did not clock the speed of the rebound, but calculated that in a collision between cars of that weight, the sedan would slow down by 27 m.p.h. while the two-seater would change speed by 53 m.p.h., moving backward at 13 m.p.h.

And these are the cars that Obama is going to force on the American people -- despite the fact that no one wants to buy them -- once their takeover of the auto industry is complete.  Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it?  At least, it does until your pop can car gets tossed off the road by a vicious gust of wind.

There's my two cents.