“thank you Fiat” - one NCAP don’t want you to read

[StevenRB45]

The other option being they admitted liability on the basis they'd taken up the excess protection on their hire car and admitting liability was a much lower effort option than fighting a claim in another country.

Fly home and get on with your life versus solicitors for months...even if the other car was on the wrong side of the road is probably easier. Deeply unlikely they'll tell their insurance at home it happened so it's absolutely the low effort option.

Either way...Panda got 0 stars due to no side airbags in the seats and power safety assists..which this particular accident didn't really test, it's also been flattered by hitting a featherweight car.

 

[The Panda Nut]

100%. The fact they mention it was a rental car and driver from another country strongly suggests that they maybe forgot themselves and ended up defaulting to the right hand side resulting in that head on collision

Not the right side, the wrong side! Thats why brexit was done and now your going back to saying they are on the right side of the road.... They're not. Micheal Caine gor it correct in the Italian job.

"REMEMBER, THEY DRIVE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD"!

 

[AndyRKett]

The other option being they admitted liability on the basis they'd taken up the excess protection on their hire car and admitting liability was a much lower effort option than fighting a claim in another country.

Fly home and get on with your life versus solicitors for months...even if the other car was on the wrong side of the road is probably easier. Deeply unlikely they'll tell their insurance at home it happened so it's absolutely the low effort option.

I suspect this is very much the case. Don't care how they want to spin it, the Panda is on the wrong side of the road. Given the other car has ended up quite a bit passed it and facing the other way, suggests it was carrying a lot more momentum than the panda suggesting the panda may have been stationary or near stationary at the time of the accident.

Either way...Panda got 0 stars due to no side airbags in the seats and power safety assists. which this particular accident didn't really test, it's also been flattered by hitting a featherweight car.

Car crashes are always like a game of conkers, and the panda was hit by a very small and very light car(conker), but even then the front of the Panda has been destroyed much more than the car that hit it. (note the panda bonnet versus the bonnet of the other car). Now imagine if that had been a much bigger or heavier vehicle (conker) that hit it, like almost every other car on the road is much bigger or heavier than a Panda.

I think she got lucky with what hit her, and if it had been anything bigger the Panda would likely have been Obliterated.

 

[vexorg]

I think she got lucky with what hit her, and if it had been anything bigger the Panda would likely have been Obliterated.

You also dont know the speeds involved, could have been 15mph for all we know and typical fiat build quality!

 

[StevenRB45]

Car crashes are always like a game of conkers, and the panda was hit by a very small and very light car(conker), but even then the front of the Panda has been destroyed much more than the car that hit it. (not the panda bonnet versus the bonnet of the other car). Now imagine if that had been a much bigger or heavier vehicle (conker) that hit it, like almost every other car on the road is much bigger or heavier than a Panda.

I think she got lucky with what hit her, and if it had been anything bigger the Panda would likely have been Obliterated.

If anything this is one of the reasons I'm very anti heavy cars..

NCAP requires all cars to be tested the same way which is fine for comparison.

But the level strength required to stop 2.5 tonne car in it's own length is massively more than that required for something barely over a ton.

So the crumple zone of one is far stiffer than the crumple of the other...and all you can hope is that the passenger cell of the small car is stiff enough to bend the crumple zone of the larger car once the crumple zone has been obliterated.

 

[AndyRKett]

If anything this is one of the reasons I'm very anti heavy cars..

One of the things with electric cars is that even a “small” car can weigh in at 1.5-2tons with the safety cell having to be extra strong and therefore extra heavy to protect the battery as well as the occupants, you don’t want the battery to rupture in an accident and cause a major battery fire.

So something like the panda which lets face it is now a car that was designed 20+ years ago with no major updates to its structure, doesn’t stand a chance against anything modern. Even something designed 10 years ago probably has a higher level of safety, and that’s not even considering Fiat’s cost cutting efforts in removing safety systems from the panda and hoping no one would notice. There is a very good reason the Panda scores so badly on NCAP


thought to give credit where credit is due, I suspect the car did to some degree prevent more serious injury (note it doesn’t say she had no injuries, just nothing serious)
I suspect should he have been sat on a chair in the road without a car around her then her injuries could have been a lot worse. So in that respect having the panda was better (safety wise) than no car at all.

 

[StevenRB45]

One of the things with electric cars is that even a “small” car can weigh in at 1.5-2tons with the safety cell having to be extra strong and therefore extra heavy to protect the battery as well as the occupants, you don’t want the battery to rupture in an accident and cause a major battery fire.

Being a dull man...one of the things I wonder is if on multipower source cars they make any allowances for the power train varying in weight. In the old days the difference between boggo petrol and a TDI might be 100kg but unlikely to be much more.

But if you take the something like Peugeot 208 lightest one is 1065kg (10 more than a Panda) heaviest is 1560kg with a battery on board.

Given NCAP test one car and that rating is used for all there's a decent chance either the petrol one is much stiffer than the average...or the electric one is a bit soft. NCAP only tested the base car...not the electric one.

In theory they should strengthen/soften the crash structures for the weight but there's no commercial advantage in it.

 

[SB1500]

You also dont know the speeds involved, could have been 15mph for all we know and typical fiat build quality!

It was likely slow enough. Given that NCAP is only at 40mph and can sometimes be a bit terrifying to see…

 

[AndyRKett]

Being a dull man...one of the things I wonder is if on multipower source cars they make any allowances for the power train varying in weight. In the old days the difference between boggo petrol and a TDI might be 100kg but unlikely to be much more.

But if you take the something like Peugeot 208 lightest one is 1065kg (10 more than a Panda) heaviest is 1560kg with a battery on board.

Given NCAP test one car and that rating is used for all there's a decent chance either the petrol one is much stiffer than the average...or the electric one is a bit soft. NCAP only tested the base car...not the electric one.

In theory they should strengthen/soften the crash structures for the weight but there's no commercial advantage in it.

I suspect it depends on the base car to begin with. i,e if it was built to be an electric car but can also run a petrol engine such as the current jeep avenger, Fiat 600, corsa Peugeot thing, then it will be built to manage an accident with the extra weight.

If it is an older car such as the Mini F56 electric built on a purely ICE based body, or the Golf,e then I suspect they would only be as strong as they were designed to be for the petrol model maybe with some extra bits of metal around the battery.

As for 1560kg in a Peugeot 208, that makes it more than 100kg heavier than our Mini Countryman which is a much bigger car and an SUV. The 208 will have much shorter crumple zones transferring more energy to the occupants.

 

[StevenRB45]

As for 1560kg in a Peugeot 208, that makes it more than 100kg heavier than our Mini Countryman which is a much bigger car and an SUV. The 208 will have much shorter crumple zones transferring more energy to the occupants.

Probably although the car is a 4 star (lost a star due to pedestrian safety) car so it should be reasonably good at it..

However the interesting thing is what happens when a small car engineered to deal with that weight meets a bigger one.

You have a head on would the small but heavy and stiff car bury itself like a torpedo in the bigger softer one? Your crumple zones don't matter so much when you're using someone elses passenger cell as a crumple zone.

 

[s130]

Well I'm not going to speculate as a crash like this, regardeless of who claimed responsibility will still have all the details examined by police/crash investigators.

What I would say is the to the right of the picture, infront of the Panda is a large water trail and smaller debris so the impact occurred out of frame to the right so where the Panda was at the poinit of impact is not determinable from this picture. It could have been pushed back, spun through 360, etc. etc.

 

[AndyRKett]

You have a head on would the small but heavy and stiff car bury itself like a torpedo in the bigger softer one? Your crumple zones don't matter so much when you're using someone elses passenger cell as a crumple zone.

This is very much the problem with a new car versus an older car and why NCAP keep upping the ante.

I get why NCAP include the electronic gadgets as their argument is that the best system for safety is one that avoids the accident all together, but when metal does meet metal, a large old car will not stand up to the safety standards of something new. I seem to recall when NCAP was introduced the 2002 Freelander was quite a new car and scored abysmally only something like 1 stars for a big SUV, there are still quite a few first generation Freelander's about so they would likely be destroyed by something smaller designed in the last say 5 - 10 years.

When NCAP retested the Panda under the newest standards it scored 45% for adult occupant, only 16% for child occupant which is a terrible score, and 47% for pedestrian safety, not even accounting for electronic devices that is pretty terrible all round, but then it is based on a car that is built on a platform which was first on the road only a year or two after that 1 star freelander, so the underpinning platform was never designed for modern NCAP performance requirements.
Something like the Aygo which is a pretty comparable car to the Panda, 5 door, 990kg, same class, Scored 78% for adult occupant, 78% for child occupant and 74% for pedestrian. but this was a car designed in the 2020s

I think in a high energy crash a modern Aygo would drive through a panda and not bat an eyelid

I'm not sure if any of the newer 208/Corsa/Fiat 600 or other cars that use the Stellantis plaform have been tested yet, but I suspect when they are they will show an increase in Fiat safety and performance with more modern platforms and modern technology.

 

[StevenRB45]

From the olden days....



Volvo is obviously pre-ncap Modus would likely be a 0 star car now.

If there's one takeaway from it...the Panda crash at the start of this thread was low speed..as if it was 40 there would be a lot more mess.

 

[vexorg]

Or why the fiat uno wasn't a great car, geniunely scary video:

 

[SB1500]

Haters gonna hate

 

[StevenRB45]

Well far be it from us to point if you were to have the same incident but the Picanto was replaced with an Avensis the father would likely be significantly less complementary.

Kinda like this one..

Scottish Man Plunges Off 120 Ft. Cliff In Land Rover... Survives

Talk about throwing yourself into your work! Angus Macleod helped design some of the safety features in his Land Rover Discovery that came in pretty handy after he plunged his off a 120 ft. cliff!

www.roverparts.com

Yes his car survived rolling down a steep bank onto a beach well done land rover.

However if it wasn't a 2.5 tonne behemoth and was in something a bit more pointy the chances of him leaving the road at the top would have been much lower as well the chances of rolling on the way down.

Sometimes the stars align and you get lucky other times you slide off the road at barely walking pace only to get a branch through the windscreen of an otherwise undamaged car.

It's a game of luck...but in the same way as someone once said "the more I practice the luckier I get" the stronger your car is the more lucky you will probably be.

Also for all the talk electronic aids doing nothing...the crash Vexorg posted for example would much less likely in the era of automatic anti collision braking. As let's face it even modern cars cannot deal with that sort of thing...

 

[SB1500]

As much as NCAP want to make people believe that the overly complex tech is the only way to make a 'safe' car.. As long as we're on the hypothetical scenario path..

Pick any car. Any car, any size class, any expense. Globally. Pick any.

Now, in the hypothetical... replace the scenario with a concrete corner. And the impact point as the corner of the car you picked above.

Every single car today (the one you picked above) self-destructs when it's crashed this way. I'm not saying the Panda is the pinnacle of modern car safety, or that the A-segment is the best statistic chance of survival or anything like that. But, if you want to be hypothetical, might as well see that any car will totally fail and kill its occupants if hit in a particular way. Even the more expensive, large ones.



Honda Jazz... big Lexus... some assorted American sedan car, you name it. They were all toast.

Electronic aids, other than potentially avoiding the crash, won't do anything to help people in the car then. There's two sides to the coin, avoiding a crash and how it copes when the crash happens. Whether you like the tech or not, avoiding it can come down to you, even in a car without it. It just depends on you if you have the discipline and organisation to avoid driving when you know you're tired and likely to drive into the other lane... or you depend on a light to enable that behaviour but fare better.

Me personally, I'm more interested in how the car fares when the crash does happen. Particularly as today's tech can't stop someone from ploughing into you anyway. Heard of a new Lexus model that pre-empts an incoming unavoidable crash by preparing the car and pulling you back, but still, beyond 'avoidance'.

 

[SB1500]

Just to add, the conclusion I've come to with the Panda is that you need to take a common sense approach to these things really. Especially in real life and tonnes of variable factors and uncertainties apply.

Whilst some believe only excessive tech will replace the need for common sense (sadly)..

If you're buying a Panda, for the most part (excluding us on FF) you're buying a car and you probably didn't intend to particularly go for the Panda. It was maybe the one that was most charming looking... the right price.. size or insurance, or handed down from family even. It might be like my granny who saw the old £99 a month deal back in the day and the fact it lacked a touch screen at the time was only an appeal to her.

It's clearly not the typical motorway cruiser ... or large family car ... or business company car choice. That doesn't mean it can't do the odd (or many) long trips if you're so inclined. It's certainly capable, if not designed with that in mind.

By definition it's a city car. If like me, post pandemic, you go into the office 2-3 days a week max, only go outside the city once or twice a month on a big trip, you're less exposed to multi-lane, fast moving traffic and even rural roads for the most part. It's also not a car most owners will flog or abuse or push into situations the light suspension and body won't cope with.

If you are in the above circumstances, if you are unlucky enough to get into an accident, chances are it's on a <40mph urban road or link, your only encounters with HGVs will also be mostly on inner city roads, supermarket car parks when they slowly move into load... A collision will likely be low speed and (hopefully) like the on the the OP article. Those odds are quite fine for the Panda (and any city car). Even bigger cars you're around most of the time won't be going too fast in most cities and towns.

That is pretty realistic and I wager quite the case with 99% of Panda owners in the UK. Hence why we aren't being flooded with horror stories in the news every week of the above scenarios happening.

Do you need all the advanced tech for urban trips to the supermarket? Picking up the kids from school? Probably not. Wouldn't do no harm.. but without it, assuming you're healthy (fit enough to drive), not legally blind and suitable to drive, able to manage your diet / energy levels like an adult, risk averse attitude and have common sense then I think you're absolutely fine in the '0 star car' that is the Panda.

Highly, highly doubt any other city car of the same weight or size fares any better once that collision has happened. Airbags won't stop a Range Rover from ripping through the side wall into your skull, neither will lane keep assist.. So for NCAP to still be awarding 5 stars to similarly structured and weight but better kitted out cars.. is a bit misleading at best.

Use case comes into it a lot.

And anyway, if the Tesla Cybertruck ever makes its way to Europe.. we're all screwed anyway as that thing will wipe us out... so enjoy sweet life while you can :'-)

 

[StevenRB45]

Do you need all the advanced tech for urban trips to the supermarket? Picking up the kids from school? Probably not. Wouldn't do no harm.. but without it, assuming you're healthy (fit enough to drive), not legally blind and suitable to drive, able to manage your diet / energy levels like an adult, risk averse attitude and have common sense then I think you're absolutely fine in the '0 star car' that is the Panda.

Common sense would not stop that tourist having a head on with you, but next time they might have paid a bit more for the hire car and got something bigger...it also won't stop you getting t-boned by someone who has run a red light which the Panda is ill equipped to deal with since they deleted a pair of side airbags.

That's kinda the point the Panda structure at one point was adequate in the modern environment it may well not be.

We can all point to cases where cars have done well or badly..at one point in my professional life I spoke to the wife of a gentleman who to use the modern parlance had unalived himself in his own front garden at approximately 5 miles an hour, in reverse.

That man was **** out of luck that day...but as per previous post the stronger your car is which still forms a good part of NCAP and the Panda still did badly on...the more lucky you are likely to be.

I am very aware I also drive a featherweight car..but it's not one from 20 years ago..and it's not had various safety things removed to save money.

 

[AndyRKett]

Pick any car. Any car, any size class, any expense. Globally. Pick any.

Now, in the hypothetical... replace the scenario with a concrete corner. And the impact point as the corner of the car you picked above.

Mini countryman which scored “good” on the iihs small overlap test which is what you’re talking about and shown repeatedly in your video.

And they’ve not even tested the newer model that was the 2014 version, it’s the same test that bent the fiat 500 safety cell and had the drivers head impact the A pillar

Also shown in that video are the exact situations we are talking about, old cars verses new cars where the driver of a new car would walk away the old car driver would be killed or left severely injured.
Also a Mercedes versus a smart car where the much greater mass of the Mercedes sent the smart car literally flying through the air, the panda is both an older designed car and had a low mass compared to most other cars.

If you’re going to judge a car on its ability to resist an accident and the shape of the car afterwards, the panda is not a great yard stick.

The argument for the driver being more aware and just not crashing doesn’t hold up and never has done but it’s the same argument people use when they’ve run out of any other defence.
You can drive as carefully as you want but that is not going to stop someone else who is not driving carefully and unfortunately you have no control over that