Is the heavier the car, the safer it is? Is there really a relationship between vehicle weight and safety?
If you take the international general automobile safety evaluation standards, the weight of the car has nothing to do with safety. The safety evaluation of automobiles can be roughly divided into two categories: active safety and passive safety, and these two types of evaluation criteria have nothing to do with vehicle weight.
Automotive active safety refers to the ability of a car to actively avoid danger. For example, there are obstacles in front of it, the car needs to slow down, emergency change of line to avoid, if necessary, direct braking to make the car stop at the shortest distance, and so on. The car's active safety devices mainly have brake systems, steering systems, lighting systems, signal systems, etc., under the blessing of modern technology, these systems are more and more intelligent, and many functions have been developed, such as brake anti-lock braking, body electronic stability control, active braking, ramp assist, brake assist, electric steering, speed steering, automatic headlights, lane assistance, line change assistance, anti-collision early warning and control system, etc. Overall, the active safety function of the car is becoming more and more powerful.
So are these features related to the weight of the car? It doesn't matter. Some people will say that the lighter the car, the better the control, the better the handling, and the stronger the ability to avoid danger. In fact, this is not right, the handling of the car, mainly related to the car's chassis suspension type and adjustment, and the weight of the car has nothing to do, the above-mentioned car active safety devices, can enhance the handling of the car to some extent. To some extent, the heavier the car, the higher the model class, the more complex the chassis suspension system structure, the better tuning, the more active safety functions that can be installed, the better the handling. For example, the handling of many medium and large cars, the weight of the car is much larger than many entry-level cars, but its handling is much better than that of entry-level cars.
The passive safety of the car mainly refers to the car's ability to protect the occupants and pedestrians outside the car after a collision and the ability of the car to avoid secondary injuries. The internationally accepted test method is crash testing. Note: In crash tests, their evaluation criteria are the degree of injury to people, basically not considering the damage to the car itself. This is the opposite of our daily experience. For example, we see road traffic accidents every day, some cars have a very tragic appearance after collision, but the crash test is five-star safety, the highest level; some cars are relatively intact in appearance, but the crash test is three-star, four-star, because it is relatively poor protection for people.
The biggest impact on the passive safety of automobiles is the body structure and materials. Today's passenger cars are basically bearing, front and rear energy absorption body structure, the crew cabin is made of high-strength steel, in the event of a collision as little deformation as possible, to provide the maximum living space for the occupants of the car, in addition to airbags, seat belts, seat seats, steering wheel collapse and other devices to protect the occupants of the car to avoid direct collisions into the body. From the perspective of international crash test standards, the passive safety of the car has nothing to do with the weight of the car, many entry-level cars can also collide with five-star safety, and there are also medium and large cars crashing into four stars or even three stars, such as PST.
But in actual road crashes, it's more about car-to-car collisions. In this case, it is true that the heavier the car, the safer it is. Because the larger the mass of the vehicle, the more energy contained, in the event of a collision, more collision energy will be transmitted to the other vehicle, so that the small mass model is more seriously damaged. To take an extreme example, Volvo, Rolls-Royce, the safety devices of these cars can be said to be armed to the teeth, but let them collide with trucks that have almost no safety devices, they are also defeated, and the trucks at this time are a fixed obstacle for them, they are equivalent to doing crash tests. So, no matter how good the safety performance of the car, do not provoke the big truck, you are not a level at all, in front of the truck, you are a can.
If you look at the collision between the daily car and between the car and the SUV, it is also the heavier the car, the safer it is. For example, if the PST with a very poor crash test score collides with the Toyota Vios with a five-star crash test score, the Vios will be directly bounced off, the appearance damage is serious, and even the rollover occurs; while the PST is safe and sound. And the collisions we often see between cars and SUVs are basically the losses of cars with smaller weights. According to the statistics of the U.S. Department of Transportation, in road accidents, the death rate of cars is three times that of SUVs, which also proves from the side that the larger the mass of the model, in the accident of the two-vehicle collision, it is indeed advantageous, and to some extent, it is safer.