Car safety institutions usually test a car’s ability to withstand several types of impacts (and how well passengers are protected), as well as how good the car’s electronics are at keeping it from having a crash in the first place.
They don’t, however, test the car’s cornering stability, or if they do, they don’t really do it thoroughly. The moose (or elk) test is not usually performed outside Sweden, or the nordic countries, but many cars that have been subjected to it have raised serious question marks about their stability during a sudden direction change at speed - it’s an eye-opening trial to put a car through.
The test itself consists of swerving to avoid a stationary obstacle in the road. It is usually performed using offset rows of cones to simulate the obstructing object, and while it may be called the moose test, its real world situation equivalent is probably somebody backing out of their driveway into the road, or something along those lines - animals in the road will usually keep moving, so in case of an actual moose, it’s usually safer to brake instead of trying to avoid.
Many cars have failed the moose test over the years, the most famous of which has to be the 1997 Mercedes-Benz A-Class. The first-gen model of the Three Pointed Star’s front-wheel drive hatchback was discovered to be highly unstable during the avoidance maneuver - and by unstable I mean it almost flipped onto its side during the test.
The issue was real and serious and Mercedes responded by fitting all A-Class models with the electronic stability, lowering the suspension and increasing the car’s rear track width. After these modifications, there were no further complaints regarding the car’s stability.
Another serious moose test offender was the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which was tested by Teknikens Värld in 2012. It was fixed eventually fixed by the manufacturer with subsequent updates, but keep in mind that if you buy a second hand example older than 2012, it may exhibit the same stability problems.
The current generation Toyota Hilux also nearly flipped when subjected to this maneuver in 2016. In fact, it wasn’t any better than the previous Hilux, tested in 2007, lifting two wheels off the ground and nearly rolling while it was tested by the same Swedish outfit - when Toyota finally responded, it changed the calibration of the vehicle’s electronic stability control and also increased the tire pressure in order to cull the behavior.
All the cars above eventually had their problems sorted out, but there are still currently cars out there who still exhibit strange and dangerous behaviors when avoiding the imaginary moose. The current Toyota RAV4, one of the most popular crossovers in the world, made by the world’s largest carmaker, for instance, performed quite poorly.
It won’t tip over, thankfully, but due to the way its stability program is calibrated, the car will bounce and skip along the road in an alarming manner. Teknikens Värld only fairly recently tested the RAV4 and Toyota has so far denied there is a problem, stating that the crossover “meets all internal tests.”
One crossover that will tip over, though, is the Nissan Kicks. Launched in 2018, the Kicks is the smallest Nissan high rider, available in the U.S., Canada and Latin America, where it is being presented as a replacement to the Juke.
However, the Kicks, which is based on the Dacia B0 platform, proved remarkably prone to tipping on its side when it was tested Autolgia in Mexico. This occurred when the sudden obstacle avoidance maneuver was performed at 65 km/h (40 mph) with the car’s stability control system turned off.
With ESP on, the Kicks proved considerably safer and more civilized, a far cry from the previous results. The bottom line in this test is: never disable the stability control in your Nissan Kicks because with it of, it is remarkably prone to rolling, even at lower speeds.
Final new vehicle that didn’t do an amazing job in the moose test is the current Nissan Jimny. One glance at the Jimny, with its tall and narrow body, suggests it’s not the most stable thing on four wheels, and the tests carried out by Km77.com highlight this.
What Suzuki did to counter its top-heavy tendency to tip over was to fit the car with skinny and not very grippy tires. This results in masses of understeer and the fact that the driver has to apply a lot of lock in order to make the vehicle turn further impedes its ability to avoid the nonexistent moose.
In other words, if you are faced with a sudden obstacle avoidance situation in the Jimny, you will be able to avoid the obstacle without making the vehicle flip on its side, but the subsequent understeer means there’s a high propensity for it to crash into something else. And, as you can imagine, driving a lifted Jimny on grippy tires makes it even less stable and more likely to flip.
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