7 Tips For "Safe" Car Shopping

 

If you’re like most consumers, purchasing a safe car is among one of your chief priorities. While every car must meet federal safety standards, not all cars are created equal. Safety features differ among vehicles which makes some “safer” than others. Many automakers build cars that exceed federal regulation minimums. Below is a list of safety features to consider before making your next vehicle purchase.

    1. Crashworthiness

If a car is considered “crashworthy” then its features enable the driver to experience lower risk for death or serious injury in the event of a crash.

    2 .Structural Design

Look for a design that includes a strong occupant compartment or safety cage. The car should be designed to buckle and bend from the front and back in the event that it crashes. The buckling enables the car to absorb the shock of the collision. “Crush zones” are designed to keep the safety cage (where you and your passengers are) safer. Once the cage starts to collapse; the risk of bodily injury increases quickly.

    3. Vehicle Size and Weight

According to the laws of physics, larger, heavier, cars are safer than lighter and smaller vehicles. Car crashes resulting in death occur twice as often to occupants of smaller vehicles than larger vehicles. In collisions between smaller and larger vehicles, the larger vehicle has the ability to push the smaller vehicle backward, decreasing the impact to the larger vehicle while increasing the impact on the smaller one.

    4. Restraint Systems

The restraint system includes seatbelts, airbags, and head restraints. All of these features work in tandem to protect people in the event of a crash. Lap and shoulder belts hold occupants in their seats which reduces the chance their bodies will hit a hard surface or that their bodies will eject from the vehicle. Without a seatbelt, occupants will continue to fly forward until they hit something harder than themselves. This action can cause serious bodily injury.

    5. Restraint Features

• Shoulder belts: they work on inertia reels. This means that the belt remains loose during regular driving but lock-up when brakes are applied suddenly or the car is impacted by a crash.
• Airbags and lap belts: these two features work very well together. It’s important to keep in mind that in some situations, once deployed, airbags can cause severe injuries and sometimes death.
• Side airbags: these features protect the occupant’s chest. Side airbags may also prevent a person’s head from hitting interior vehicle structures.
• Head restraints: front seats are required to have these installed. Head restraints prevent the head from snapping back in the event of a rear-end hit.

   

    6. Anti-lock Brakes

Conventional brakes may lock and cause the car to skid when the driver applies hard pressure to them. The reason anti-lock brakes are safer than their counterparts is that they pump automatically a second time to prevent the brakes from locking, giving the driver more time to adjust to the situation. Many of you probably learned to brake gently on slippery roads and pump your brakes to avoid skidding. If your car has anti-lock brakes, continuously press down hard to activate the anti-lock brake system. Remember that while anti-lock brakes may give you more time to regain control of your steering, they will not help you stop any faster than a conventional braking system.

    7. Use Daytime Running Lights

When you flip the ignition, your daytime running lights are activated. Daytime lights are essentially high-beam headlights which run on low intensity or low power. These lights can help prevent daytime accidents by highlighting the contrast between oncoming vehicles and the background, thereby increasing driver visibility.

 Experience and Expectations

Certain vehicles have design characteristics that can lend to higher risk on the road. Small utility vehicles are more prone to rolling over and “high performance” vehicles tend to accrue higher than average death rates. Studies show that people who drive “fast” cars are more tempted to speed. Teenagers who have minimal driving experience coupled with “fast” cars can be an especially dangerous combination.