An international crash-test agency called Global NCAP conducted the first ever independent crash tests for some of the most popular cars in India, several of which are also sold in the Middle East.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the United States runs a unique “small-overlap” crash test where they make all test-subject cars to crash into an immobile object with only part of the frontal area of the car. It is supposed to replicate what happens when the front corner of a vehicle collides with another vehicle or an object such as a tree or a lamp-post. In the test, 25%t of a vehicle’s front end on the driver’s side strikes a rigid barrier at 64 kph. And the 11 mini-cars tested performed poorly, although it’s not a huge surprise.
We’ve all seen it. It’s a dummy sitting in a car with slow-motion cameras mounted around it, hurtling towards a barrier at a respectable speed. That’s crash-testing in a nutshell. However, it turns out it is not just that when it comes to protecting your lives by rating car safety.