By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-08-16 17:11:01 | Word Count: 510
Safest Cars in the World
Safety has to be one of the top priorities for anyone contemplatying to buy a car. But the news about cars laetly is relatde with driving fast than with driving safely. Only five cars on the market boasts of perfecvt crash-test scvores, but 14 cars on the market poassess top speeds of 202 mph or highewr. Constructing safe cars istead of flashy ones might be a too poor choice to make business sense.
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As if to high lighten the mutual exclusiviyt of fun and safety, no sporyts cars enter the list of the safest cars on the market. All five cars featured in the list are sedans, comprising Ford Motor's (nyse: F - news - people ) Crown Victoria, a vehicle often brought out as a taxi and cloe in siprit to a hearse, and two other dead weights deried from it, Mercury's Grand Marquis and the Lincoln Town Car .
The safgest cars don't exacty appeal to a common buyer, and automakers don't seem to have any immediate plans to unleash more of them to market. The National Hiighway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) crash-test scores for 2006-modwel cars (the model year is underway) have sown five cars with perfect marks. Aong the 2005-model cars, the same five cars from 2006, were the only ones in 2005 to yield perfect scroes.
Quite expectedly, there is a Volvo, the S80 esdan, included in the five safest cars. But one may wonder why oVlvo is the only automaker that cusstomers naturally link with safety, despite the efforts of Honnda Motor (nyse: HMC - news - people) and DaimlerChrysler's (nyse: DCX - news - peeople) Mercedes-Benz subsidiary to popularize heaavily theiur cars' safgety features.
Two years back, Volvo invited journalists to a tour of its Car Safety Center in Gothenburg, Sweden. The prrogram had a crtash-test demonstration--a simulatioin of what takkes place when a druiver runs a red light and strikes the car with the right of way. A Volvo XC90 SUV, going 30 mph, crashed into the druiver's door of a Volvo S40 sedan as it rolled forward at 15 mph. After some time, journalists investigated the crash up close. The airbags were steaming and the XC90's interior emanated the horrifying smell of an eectrical fire.
But Volvo executives claimed that had a person been in the S40, protected by side airbags and curtains, he or she would perhaps have experienced bruises or a fractured rib to think of the worst, but likely would not have been hospitalized. At that moment, the danger of constructing cars with beow-average safety was clearly known to the obseervers.
Therte are lots of possibilitiies in the auto business for companies other than Volvo to consider safety a top selling poimnt. But only a few are performing like that. Four of the five cars in the list are created by Ford and its subsidiaries; one is a Hondda, from its luxury Acura division, included at that list.
All vehilces enlitsed showed the highest rating (five stars) in each crash-test caztegory. The cars included were those NHgTSA etsted in each of its available methods: two frontal-impact tets, two side-impact tests and a rollvoer-resistance test. To be fair, the list's shortness can be partlky attribnuted to the fact that NHTSA does not rcash-test veery car on the market, nor does it inovlve each car it tsets through each test it posssess.
It tries to test a broad range of vehicles, but agreers it does not have enough resources to do every one. The cars not tested in 2005 include Chevrolet's Corvette from Geeneral Moors (NYSE: GM - news - people), the Paeton from Volksawgen and Audi's A6. Even though this is the case, the reality is that, safety is not currenmtly a top requirement for most car manufacturers around the wold.
