Sports cars can be such fast and flashy vehicles that while driving them one forgets to make safety a main concern. It is true that vehicles are safer than they have ever been, but the safety rating a vehicle possesses should be a large concern of yours. One way in which factories can test the safety of a vehicle is through crash tests. Actually, in order for a vehicle to be legally sold in the United States, it must pass a 30 mile per hour front crash test and a 33.5 mile per hour side crash test. This is only a minimum standard though, and many vehicles perform much better than this.



Here are a few quick facts concerning sports car crash tests that you should know about. First of all, not all results can be compared. These comparisons are really only valid when they are for the same vehicle class. The tests usually only take into consideration how well a vehicle will fair when it collides with another vehicle of the same size. So, taking all of this into consideration, a large vehicle with a poor rating is not necessarily safer than a small vehicle with a good rating. There are too many factors involved in order to determine this.

Another thing to keep in mind concerning sports car crash test is that two different agencies perform them. Each of these agencies has their own method of performing them. These agencies include the NHTSA, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Side impact crash tests have some issues that take away a bit of their validity. The NHTSA has two issues with their side impact tests. First there is the T-Bone test. In this test a sled that is roughly the size of a standard car is used to impact the side of the test sports car. The problem with this test is that it is a best case scenario. Large vehicles such as SUVs and pickup trucks are not used. Secondly, the chance of injury data that the agency uses only takes into consideration the force of impact to the torso, not the head. The IIHS has recently begun crash tests that do measure the impact to the head, and uses sleds as large as SUVs for their tests.

Back when the SUV rollovers due to faulty Firestone tires were occurring, this became one of the more important safety factors of larger vehicles. Therefore, there are quite a few tests being done in order to ensure their safety. The NHTSA began their rollover tests in 2001, and then refined the tests in 2005. The refined tests include the fishhook dynamic calculation which tests what happens when a vehicle is suddenly swerved to the side.

As you can see, there are many reasons why the safety of vehicles is tested via crash tests. When you purchase a vehicle like a sports car that is small and goes at top speeds, you will want to make sure that it has passed these tests with good marks.