Mass does not always win out. Isnt the argument that because a mini is so light it requires less force to slow it. Mass VS imovable object like a tree, mass does not always win out, because in the past 4wds have been classed as trucks and not cars, they have not legally had to implement impact absorbing bumper bars.

And they use full chassis dont they? Which i dont think understand how to crumple.

When you say that the mini was designed for the engine to sink under the passenger floor, i have my doubts as to whether it was designed to do anything. When issigonis was so concerned about space and just fitting everything in, was the safety ever a cocern?

It is a great thing in practice if the car does actually ride over the engine.


I realise these comments arnt that relevent to the original topic, but i like talking about safety i guess.

I didn't see it, but spoke to a guy who was in the back of a mini when it was hit in the side by a car doing 80kph - the advantage is the lightness, it was simply pushed along the road. This guy was in the back seat, on the impact side, and walked away.

I can show this pic of my mini too... the impact was right rear, and the rear seat base and rear firewall took an amazing amount of force and buckled, if I had passengers in the back they would have been fine. The basic box structure is as strong as you could hope for IMHO

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Here's a picture of what happens with a mini when you hit a tree:



Both walked away...I'll. let the doc fill in everything cause i don't want to say anything that's not right, i wasn't there obviously..

Personally getting hit by something is furthest in my mind and the fact that you can get out of the way so easily in a mini has saved me many a time.

I had a car pull out from a parking spot as i was coming up next to them, in the commodore i pulled the wheel a hard half turn away and the car kinda waffled and moved about a meter or two quickly..still clipped me though. If i was in the mini that damn thing would have jumped to the opposite side of the road at the flick of a wrist..

There's a point there, if your going to drive around like miss daisy not paying attention of course it's going to be a death trap compared to a volvo..but if you are paying attention to the road, i believe you should be able to avoid most accidents better than a big sedan or even small car of today..

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Starlet Conversion:
http://www.ausmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15484

Because of the shape of the subframe, the engine and gearbox assembly should go under the car, though nothing is garanteed.



Perhaps I can help here. I was surprised at how well my car (850, sliding windows) held up when irrisistable force tried to meet immovable object. The object won.
Despite the door being only a skin, the tree only managed to only make it's way about 6-8 inches into my car (drivers side) because of the rigid steel sectoins around it.
It didn't take me long to start asking myself questions like: What would've happened if my excel hit the tree not the mini? How worse off would I have been had there not been racing seats? Etc.

The point is if you really want to loose concerns over mini safety, maybe it's not the car for you, unless you go the MINI way. Otherwise, maybe a roll cage can help?

How safe it is generally comes down to two things

1. Penetration of any object into the passenger cell and hence impacting the passenger.

2. The rate of deceleration of organs- ie the brain

If you hit something hard enough, at the right angle, you are relying on parts of the car to crumple to avoid 2, because the energy absorbed by the deformation of metal comes from the velocity. When you run out of crumple, which is obviously worse in a mini because there is less to crumple, then you are relying on having already lost enough energy that 1 does not become a problem.

Most modern small cars rely heavily on airbags to meet safety standards. But there is something to be said about the way those safety standards are measured. There is one head on impact test, one offset head on impact and one side impact test they do, at relatively low speeds. The test object is a flat piece of concrete or steel that does not crumple. Does this represent every kind of accident that can possibly occur? No poles or trees, no rollovers, no truck doing 100km/h in the opposite direction to add up to a real impact speed of 200km/h, no missing the fact that the truck in front has stopped and spearing under it. So modern cars improve the probability of survival in a particular type of accident, and those types of accidents have been statistically worked out to be the most common, which is why they put those tests in the standard in the first place.

In my opinion almost every "accident" can be put down to driver error. Face it, if on a road that has 10,000 vehicles a day use it, and there is one accident a year, then that driver has not managed to drive to the conditions and circumstances present at that time. 350,000 other drivers managed to do it without crashing.

Your survival on the roads in any vehicle becomes a lottery as to how every other mug is driving, not what car you are in.

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It was a pleasure ausmini. I'll miss all you misfits and reprobates

obviously the safety features just aren't there..
but the body itself is extremely stiff and strong compared to modern cars due to the external seams etc

so they're good for what they are, but if a SUV comes along from the side, you are gonna be f**** in a mini or in pretty much any other car including another SUV where you would tip over.

A crash in a Mini that is going to do damage to you is more than likely going to do the same damage in another car. If it's bad enough, then it doesn't matter what you are in.

You can't compare a car designed in the 50's to a brand new car that has just been released. Having said that, they did produce the Mini which was relativily unchanged until the end 1/4 of 2000. Only things the late ones had were side intrusion bars and airbags (which only appeared real late in manufacture). The Mini has had to pass all the safety requirements every year it was produced until production ceased in 2000.

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The survival in the pic Mini Mad posted is quite amazing, especiall given that neither of them were wearing seat belts, the state of that car is terrible. I think they must have been incredibly lucky, but i thought they went to hospital with shattered legs and whatever else, so i doubt they walked away.

Thats from memory anyway, there was a guy on the minimania forum that had a very serious accident, and he praised the mini for crumpling around him.

Seeing your accident pics harley was somthing that prompted me to form this thread, though i have always been interested. I would think that the square tube that the seats sit on would help strengthen the mini in side impacts.

Skssgn, i didnt think your accident was that serious? though obviously it was as you ended up rolling, i thought they basically clipped your tail from the opposite direction, sending you spinning out?


Did anyone see the wrecked mini outside LINK, where the head of someone sitting in the rear would have been about where the head of somthing sitting in the front was.

The metal in my two sixties Minis is much meatier than that in my wife's modern Jap box. I rolled a Mini once down an embankment and crawled out virtually unscathed. Hate to try that in the wife's car, even washing it the roof flexes when you apply pressure.

Being small the Mini presents less of a target. Being agile with razor sharp steering and handling to match means you can often avoid collisions whereas other cars would plough straight into them (certainly my 4wd would).

Much of the Mini's safety resides in its chuckability. Of course if something ploughs into the back of you there's not much you can do about it but, in my experience the rear boot area crumples much like a modern car is designed to do. This has happened to me twice and both times I was ok.

I've also crashed into some roadworks at night which the local council had left unlighted. The power unitl went down under the car and again I walked away unhurt.

Alright there are no airbags or anti intrusion bars but their small dimensions and supreme agility are something modern cars can't match.


SLIDE

I can't let that go... can't happen, impossible.

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There was a great show on SBS/ABC couple of months ago, it was all about vehicle safety and the improvemnets made over the last 30 odd years, the general opinion came out as the safer they made cars the more stupid people treated them, one guy reckons instead of airbags they should have metal spikes coming out of the steering wheel, the more safety item they put in the worse people behave thinking that it makes them more bulletproof. They talked to the people from Ford US and GM and they talked about the fitting of seatbelts and the unwillingness of the drivers to use them and that when they started fitting airbags how the drivers reckon they could stop using seatbelts because airbags would save them. Cars are only as safe as the people driving them, some people will go to great lengths to cause accidents driving cars that are unroadworthy and not paying attention.

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I have heard of this idea of the metal spike coming out of the steering wheel. Apparently studies have been done linking peoples behavior behind the wheel to a percieved level of danger. eg. If they made lanes wider and install barriers between oncoming lanes people responded to this added level of safety by going faster in an attempt to reach their comfortable level of perceived danger. This means that as other cars on the road get safer and accordingly people get more reckless it makes the road a more dangerous place for us mini drivers.
Perhaps we should equip our minis with missile launchers to even the score

IMHO, two rules when considering a car's passive safety (its ability to protect you in an actual collision);
1. Mass ALWAYS wins (you cannot change the laws of physics)

2. The newer the car, the safer it is.

5th Gear (on Foxtel) have done a number of real world crashes on their program to highlight car safety. Some of crashes they have done;

A) head-on between an early 90's Volvo 940 and BMW 5 series each travelling at 60 mph. Conclusion - neither driver would have survived despite the size and safety features of each car.

B) Smart car front on into a 10 tonne (? - it was BIG) concrete barrier at freeway speeds. Amazingly there was no penetration into the cabin despite the short front overhang of the Smart, and the little car managed to move the entire concrete barrier. Conclusion - despite the lack of cabin intrusion, the occupants would have died due the massive organ deceleration / g Forces. They also smashed a Barina (Opel Corsa) and got a worse result - the cabin was demolished.

C) Late 90's Renault Espace (3 star NCAP) offset head on collision with a new model Renault Espace (5 star NCAP) at around 30mph (?). Both had driver's airbag, but the ability of the newer car to absorb the impact and still retain an intact cabin (these are Tarago type cars) meant no injuries for the driver of the newer car, whilst the older car driver's injuries would have been life threatening.

D) Pajero t-boning an early 90's Honda Civic. The Civic driver's door that took the impact ended up touching the inside of the passenger door (the 4WD basically drove right through the cabin), and it highlighted the danger of 4WD's raise height in that their chassis is at shoulder height (and alot higher than a smaller car's chassis).

I'm under no delusion that a mini is not the kind of car I would like to be in in an accident. However I haven't bought it for its safety features (my daily car has all those for transporting the family), and for the amount of kms I plan to do in it I'm confortable with risk. On the topic of risk, there is no car that is absolutely safe. Nothing in life is risk free, and you just have to weigh up what risks you want to take as part of living life. That's why I chose to give up riding motorbikes. /Rant

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That's right. Ever noticed 90% of cars involved in accidents (or mostly the ones that cause them) are reasonably new cars? Some people's thoughts are "I have traction control, therefore I can go round corners faster and the ABS makes me stop quicker than anyone else".