Frontal Car Crash Test gives Several Top Manufacturers poor rating, while Toyota Receives Good

The frontal crash test by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has become a serious benchmark for ensuring traveller’s safety since it made the first appearance. Nowadays car manufacturers from U.S. is checking the newly build car’s efficiency to reduce the damage when it faces frontal crash with another vehicle or tree or poll. Recently IIHS performed a frontal overlap car test with four majorly sold minivans in U.S., which are The Chrysler Group LLC Dodge Grand Caravan, Toyota Motor Corp Sienna, Nissan Motor Co Quest and The Chrysler Town & Country.

Minivans are hugely popular in U.S. villages and small town because of its capability to carry small to large carriages and also almost all delivery agencies use this type of minivan for transportation in U.S. towns. Crash test is being done to check how the car defence prohibits the hit to make severe damage. According to the test report, except Toyota Motor Corp Sienna, rest of the candidate minivans performed very poorly in the test. Toyota’s minivan joins Honda Motor Co Odyssey, which received ‘best safe pick-up’ rating from IIHS earlier.

How the test is being performed?

This test by IIHS only replicates the actual event of what happens during a road accident involving the frontal part of the car. In this test, around 25% of the front of a car hits an obstacle at an average speed of 40 miles per hour. The camera and sensors installed at different parts of the car, evaluates the car’s response to the hit.

Detailed report:

Minivans are popular mainly within parents and family-minded customers because of its road safety feature. According to the test report, three of four candidate models, namely The Chrysler Group LLC Dodge Grand Caravan, Nissan Motor Co Quest and The Chrysler Town & Country, when hit with an overlap obstacle, showed severe damage to the car and allowed high degree of intrusion involving the driver’s area.

A spokesperson from the institute stated that the Nissan minivan structure just collapsed like ‘a house of cards’. The Chrysler automobile minivans also showed severe damage as the steering wheel moved out of the coordinated place. This results in making the airbag less efficient and simultaneously driver’s head hits the dashboard. IIHS test report given The Chrysler Group LLC Dodge Grand Caravan,Nissan Motor Co Quest and The Chrysler Town & Country very poor rating, while Toyota Motor Corp Sienna received an acceptable rating prescribing the car safety to be ‘Okay’.

Toyota Sienna was also ranked in ‘Top Safety Pick up+’ car list, as it warns the driver prior to any possible front collision and also features an automatic brake system.

Response from the manufacturer:

After the release of test report, concerned manufacturers released mixed responses. Nissan released an official statement which says the company will continue the revision of the models and will improve the safety. While Chrysler automobile group stated that this single test cannot state their car to be damage prone.