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Forbes reports on Tesla's reaction to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's crash test safety rating for the Tesla Model S:
Tesla does not take criticism well. Tesla has long had an attitude that anything said about the company, its products or CEO that isn't absolutely hagiographic is tantamount to heresy and anyone who disagrees hates humanity and the planet. Thus I was disappointed but not at all surprised to see the company's official, dismissive response this morning to the latest batch of crash test results from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which didn't reinforce the company line that everything it does is the best ever.
The Tesla Model S received only an "acceptable" rating from IIHS on its small overlap frontal crash test, a notch below the top rating of "good," with slack in the seat belt allowing a crash test dummy's head to hit the steering wheel despite the cushioning of the airbag. The less than optimal result comes after Tesla had said it had corrected the problem in the wake of a similar result in an earlier test.
A Tesla spokesperson's response was to besmirch IIHS. "IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes." Yes they do. IIHS's purpose is to protect drivers and of course, in turn, reduce the payouts for insurance companies.
Also at CNET and Business Insider.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 07 2017, @04:38PM
A) Not playing it down. You called it a, "death sentence," which is overplaying it. Many people survive such injuries. Which you seem to deny.
B) Yeah. And it can happen EVEN THOUGH THE AIRBAG DEPLOYS. It can happen in a Tesla. It can happen in a Volvo. It depends entirely upon the physics of the particular accident and the deployment time of the bag versus the forward acceleration of the person less the restraining force of the belt after it deploys. So don't make it out like in order to get a head injury one CAN'T have been wearing the belt. Which is my point here - one can wear a belt perfectly and nevertheless get a head injury from a steering wheel.
(The severity of which depends upon both the speed of impact with the wheel, and the speed with which the brain impacts the frontal bone in coup-contrecoup motion if you want to speak the language of emergency medicine. But if it's enough to leave a mark it gets treated as the crisis it is. Then again, any airbag deployment with any significant vehicle damage gets treated as serious trauma in any event because head injury is just one of the ways one dies in an accident. Just as common is injury to the heart caused by the restraint of the shoulder belt.)
C) You don't have a lap-belt on your car? Even if you have a shoulder strap? Yeah, the part that goes ACROSS YOUR WAIST is a LAP BELT, even in a three point harness where it is part and parcel of the shoulder belt. Sorry if you call that bit something different, or if you live in a backwards country where nothing goes across your waist. (Or you drive a car using a four point harness. More safe but nobody does it outside of racing in the U.S.) And MOST people wear that lap belt above the iliac crest (the top of your hips for any who don't know anatomy.) Such that in an accident it restrains your intestines / bladder and maybe base of stomach if you ride it really high. Which causes unintentional soft tissue abdominal injuries in an accident, because it's meant to ride on that upper part of your hips.
Oh, and in the U.S., seatbelt use for adults is mandatory by law in all states except New Hampshire. I'll grant you that compliance isn't all that great always. And you're right - make it a habit you do without thinking and it is easy and it should be.
I'm sorry I jumped all over you. But your stating all steering wheel head impacts is a death sentence is incorrect. As is your assertion that one can't get a steering wheel injury while wearing a seatbelt. (Or did you miss the bit that said a belt was being used in TFA?) And I've seen enough of them to know, to call that out as bullshit.
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