How safe is your car if it hits a tree sideways and wraps around it? Well that’s just one of the new tests the government will begin to offer shoppers with better information about a car’s safety. The Bush administration announced today that the government’s safety ratings will still be out of five stars but the new program will ad an overall safety rating that combines scores from several new crash tests.
The rating system will go into effect in 2010 and will include new front and tests and a test in which a vehicles hits a pole sideways showing how safe it is if it wraps around a tree. The rating factor will now also include the ability of a vehicle to guard against leg-injuries in a head-on collision.
The government will also use female crash dummies with long hair to represent women and large children to represent overweight kids.
The new rating system will also take into account the range of new technologies such as electronic stability control, lane departure and forward collision warning systems.
Source: Free Press
