God Damned Auto Safety Fuckers!

So I happened across a news article today, a little piece (of shit, if you looked at my title) of reporting about small cars and safety. Just reading the tag line lets you know what this article is all about. Basically it says that this not-for-profit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has done a few tests on all the fuel efficient small cars on the road and has determined them to be death traps, designed to enclose the driver in a metal cage, then hurl them into razor sharp spikes. Those ballsy motherfuckers at Honda have been trying to kill us for years and now we have the proof. Oh wait, I sense something, perhaps there is an ulterior motive behind an independent study, done by a specialty group, against a class of vehicle with stunning findings.

At this point I am used to this, I haven't had the unwavering faith to trust any "independent investigation" that claims to have stunning evidence of such and such bullshit. You see in the past 8, hell 20 years it has become the norm to have these not-for-profit companies created, then funded privately by certain groups, with certain interests, and then the group creates a series of tests or an investigation and voila, you have tailor made numbers for whatever pet crusade you adhere to.

So too with this.

You see the report says that in testing car safety, automotive companies only apply industry standards, but do not test for certain outlying problems, which for them is what happens when you hurls a Dodge Ram at a smart car? Now mind you the smart car will usually get wrecked, but the driver generally will walk away. This is not the study that they are performing, they are hurling larger vehicles, head on at an already speeding smart car, at speeds that most accidents of the type they are depicting don't occur at. The result of the findings then are shocking because they reveal that everyone in the smart car is dead and the medium to large SUV's are coming out tip top. Never mind the fact that it is exceptionally rare to have two cars driving DIRECTLY AT EACH OTHER AT FORTY MILES AN HOUR, with both drivers avoiding stopping or turning. What we have is a company playing chicken. Now they say that because the smart car can't stand such force it is inherently much more dangerous than the SUV. They ask you to please ignore the fact that most of us don't play chicken while hopped up on 'ludes. Their recommendations for the problem are to beef up small cars, into more medium sized cars, and to not fall for all that bullshit about 'green' this and 'peak oil' that.

So basically this article is character assassination against all the small cars that are coming out, and which are being pushed for to change our shitty shitty environment for the better. Now when I read this I had to stop and consider who did it, a group of independent insurance companies, all trying to get the best results. Well, I decided to dig a bit deeper, because why would these particular insurance companies be actively throwing a wrench in the gears of vehicles that, if they become the norm, will probably be safer, and cost them less money to pay for if they explode, after a hummer rams them at 100 mph.

Well, a quick review determined that one of the board of directors, Mr. Gary Kusumi, works for GMAC insurance group, an insurance company whose purpose is to provide coverage to large SUV's, motor homes and high end off road vehicles, you know, the good guys from the articles. So in effect you have a slightly partisan fellow directing the company, and Christ knows where the funding for the study came from.

Naturally the IIHS sent out notices to all the companies that make the cars they tested, Toyota, and Honda (do I smell a GMC conspiracy?) to which the quality and safety communications manager for Honda sent a letter back to the press, "The IIHS test is equivalent to an 80-mph closing speed (with opposing vehicles traveling at 40 mph), a speed and energy higher than 99.1% of all real-world crashes," fun. Also Honda pointed out that the tests also depicted "unusual or extreme conditions", so yeah, seems kind of like this was just a series of tests to start turning public opinion against cheap smart cars, and more towards slightly more expensive American medium to large cars.

I mean seriously people, I hate shit like this, I should make a company that tests large cars for safety. I'll drop nuclear subs on them, then point out how they were unable to stand up to the force of impact against large objects. Or better yet, I'll take a SUV, and then launch baseballs at it, at 1,000 mph, then show unequivocally that small projectile, possibly kicked up from the road, will impale your car, and cut you in half. Fuck you independent studies, you can all eat a bag of dicks.




God damn you all to hell!