Wage war, of course. Not against anyone, but against the main crash test rival, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and its new rating system.
You all know by know that both organizations perform their own crash tests, so a given vehicle may receive a Top Safety Pick from the Institute and a five star rating from the government. We'll not go into how each of them awards their ratings, because that it would be besides the point.
What it is not besides the point is the fact that the IIHS says that its Top Safety Pick is better than NHTSA's stars.
Using data recorded on side impact tests conducted by itself, the IIHS found that the “driver of a vehicle rated good for driver protection in a side impact is 70 percent less likely to die in a left-side crash compared with a driver of a vehicle rated poor.” Duh...!
What's wrong with that? Well, the NHTSA uses an ancient barrier to hit the cars on their sides. One which was designed back in the days when cars, not SUVs, made up the majority of the vehicles on the roads. The IIHS, on the other side, uses a modern, SUVish one.
Another reason why drivers of IIHS-rated cars will live while the others might die in horrible pain is the type of dummy used. While the NHTSA is misogynistic and uses average-size men, the IIHS smashes dummies representing small women or 12-year-old children.
That is better, the IIHS says, because women and shorter drivers are more likely than men to suffer serious head injuries in real-world side impacts.
"This was our first look at how our ratings correlate with actual crash data since we started side tests in 2003, and the numbers confirm that these are meaningful ratings," Institute chief research officer David Zuby stated the obvious.
"Vehicles with good side ratings provide occupants with far more protection than vehicles that do poorly in our test."
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