US Trying to Perfect its Safety Rating System; Can't we Just Meet EU Standards and Call it a Day?

US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has announced a new and improved 5-star safety rating system for 2011 vehicles. If you're interested about your new car, scroll on down for some of the vehicles tested. As of now, the BMW 5-Series (RWD) and Hyundai Sonata are the only vehicles to be top-rated (33 of the 55 models to be tested have been graded thus far).

The NHTSA says the new protocols will also test "side-pole" accidents and crash-prevention systems, as well as using new dummies (hopefully these will be set up properly). One new addition will be the use of a smaller "female" dummy to gauge accidents involving women. Also, new "injury criteria" will be implemented, as well as the use of an Overall Vehicle Score.

NHTSA Administrator David Strickland says, "We want consumers to embrace these new safety technologies as a way to make vehicles safer. We believe electronic stability control, lane departure warning, and forward collision warning offer significant safety benefits and consumers should consider them when buying a new car." Well, yeah.

By Phil Alex

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Desert Drifting a Sonata: Knowing When to Stop is a Sign of Wisdom...

What happens when you live in / near the desert and have a bunch of money to waste? Cars get destroyed, that's what. Here's a small clip of somebody taking their Hyundai Sonata out for a little slideways action and utterly shredding the rear passenger side. I'd venture to say it's totaled, considering the rear wheels aren't meant to be pushed up into the wheel well like that.

Also, how fast do you have to be going to launch the spare tire out of the trunk? If anyone knows what event this was or what specifically was going on (other than putting that poor white Sonata into a mound of dirt), give us a shout.

By Phil Alex

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FAIL No2: Volvo V60 Safety System Flub Ends with a Dead Dummy Named Bob

This is officially the second safety system demonstration in as many "Look at this!" announcements that has gone horribly wrong for Volvo. That's right, two. The first one was back in May and led to a new S60 estate crushing itself into the back of a truck - see the video here. This latest mishap occurred during a media demonstration to Australian journalists in Europe.

Now that the known-as-safe Volvo brand is officially owned by the Chinese, is this a sign of things to come?

The mechanism in question is part of Volvo's pedestrian avoidance technology, which makes use of cameras and radar in the nose of the vehicle to control the brakes and stability control system in order to reduce driver/pedestrian injuries. The object that the system was meant to detect was Bob the Dummy; as you can see in the vids below, it didn't detect a damn thing.

That's not to say the system is terrible; after all is said and done, it worked 75% of the time. Of the twelve runs, only one ended with Bob getting the full force of the Volvo unleashed on him, with the other two still being less than perfect. Some of the blame has been placed on a camera that doesn't work well in low-light conditions (infrared / night vision, guys?).

Volvo's Jonas Tisell, Active Safety Systems manager, told journalists, "The failure of the test was due to the dummy not being set up properly, therefore it did not give an echo enough for the system. So the dummy was not relevant in this situation." So...blame it on the dummy? And "not relevant"? How does being to blame (according to Volvo) translate as irrelevant?

More like Volvo just got caught with its pants down...again.

By Phil Alex

Via: Drive and Autoblog.com

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Segway Company Owner Dies After Riding Two-Wheeler Off a Cliff...

British tycoon and owner of the Segway company, Jimi Heseldon, has died after reportedly driving one of the firm's motorized two-wheelers off a cliff and into a river near his estate in Thorp Arch, Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, on Sunday, according to news reports.

"Police were called at 11.40am yesterday to reports of a man in the River Wharfe, apparently having fallen from the cliffs above," a spokesman for West Yorkshire Police force told reporters.

"A Segway-style vehicle was recovered. He was pronounced dead at the scene. At this time we do not believe the death to be suspicious."

The 62-year-old businessman, whose personal fortune was worth £166million earning him 395th place on this year's Sunday Times Rich List, brought the Segway from its U.S. inventor Dean Kamen in January 2010.

Source: Daily Mail / AP

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FAIL: Toyota Land Cruiser vs Puddle [Accident Content]

Nothing brings you back to driving-reality quite as effectively as good a ol' cold shower, or in this case, a puddle bath. The sinkhole incident involving this new Toyota Land Cruiser Prado reportedly happened during a test-drive event organized by a Prado fan club (we're assuming it occurred somewhere in Russia). Photos and a video of the accident after the break.

Spasiba to Alex V. for the tip!

Via: Carlifeblog , Source: Prado-club

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BP Ultimate 1, Ultimate Driving Machine 0; Porsche 911 GT3 Crashes into Gas Pump

The Porsche GT3 RS is widely accepted to be one of the best handling performance cars on the road today. So how is it that this driver managed to slam it into the petrol pump at a BP service station?

In any case, you only have to type, "car + petrol station" into YouTube to see just how lucky this guy was... Sure, the repairs will no doubt cost more than a well-equipped Toyota Corolla but at least he wasn't burnt alive.

We gather this accident happened in England because of the blue-and-yellow-marked Police Mitsubishi (Shogun?) parked in the background, but that's about all the information we have.

We would have contacted BP for a statement, but we assumed they were busier with some...ahem...other, little accident...

By Tristan Hankins

Via: Autoblog.nl & Jalopnik , Photos: Quattroworld

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