Here's How Shockingly Far Car Crash Safety Has Come In 20 Years

This video shows a direct comparison between the impact safety of the latest Honda Jazz versus a Rover 100 from 1997, and the difference is astonishing

Matt Kimberley

02 Feb 2017

This is the sort of video that stops you buying a budget banger. Euro NCAP has been testing cars’ crash impact safety for 20 years, and to mark the milestone has released this footage comparing one of its original tests to one of its latest.

Taking two small cars; 1997’s Rover 100 and today’s Honda Jazz, the direct comparison via split-screen footage is a serious reminder of why buying the newest car you can afford is always a safer idea. Unless it’s a Mustang, it seems.

Watch the video and make your own mind up. Let us know whether this film gets you in the feels, or whether you’re just too much of a maverick to care.

Comments

*watches this video, laughs, then continues to drive Classic Porsche “widow-maker”

*mustang

How so, slow in, fast out

Proceeds to drive a SW20 in the rain

Volvo be like :Pffft noobs

or: Pfffft peasants😂😜

Same problem with Indian made cars. Most of them aren’t well made and lack even the most basic safety kit :(

That is insane!

It’s Honda, what do you expect? They’re helping old granny live a lot longer!

Well, isn’t the Rover a bad example here? It’s actually a design introduced in 1980 (Austin Metro), which makes the span between the cars a massive 37 years.

Indeed, do the crash test again with something like a Vw polo. Still small, but engineerd in the late 90s

I was going to mention it too..Rovers where never actually known for their safety levels..

Indeed; the basis for the design goes back even further than 1980, and into the late ‘70s.

I had one for my first car, a 1981 Austin Metro 1.0 HLE. No airbag, no ABS, 135R13 tyres that would lock up far to easy in the rain. I’m surprised I survived driving that thing at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNBSuNrU9UI

The biggest difference is the overlap. The volvo test is a full frontal crash, not a 20% or 30% overlap like euro ncap does…

“Shockingly”…

Try “pleasingly”.

Volvo owner- laughs ‘lol plastics’

Ive always thought of this as a curious 15 year old, if they do 40 mph crash tests into a wall isnt that the equivalent to two cars hitting each other head on while theyre both doing 20mph? Since the closing speed between the 2 cars will be 40mph?

Yes.

No, mythbusters tested that, a 40mph crash into a wall is worse, because the wall stops you, while the cars ca move freely

no, because of the law of physics the momento is annulled and its like a car hitting a barrier at 20mph…

If they were going the exact same speed and impacted exactly right, their vehicles would drop from whatever speed they are going down to 0. This is the equivalent of hitting a solid wall at the same speed; you’re still going from whatever speed down to 0.