Story in yesterday's Telegraph.
Woman in her 50's was killed in an car crash, she was some 15+st in weight.
Pug 107 (not sure if current or old model) was only tested with driver around 12.5st.
Peugeot spokeperson said the car was a safe car - it had not been tested with a heavier than average driver.
Does that mean a person, say 15 stone, should loook to buying at least a Astra/Focus sized car just in case they have a prang or do manufacturers of mid sized cars assume that drivers are less than 12.5st?
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I would not be surprised if all crash testing was done with a standard adult size and weight dummy so that NCAP safety stars are comparable across different makes of car.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 17 Oct 10 at 15:14
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Chances are a female of that weight is a fairly large person, spilling out of the area designated by the designers for driver. Airbag possibly overwhelmed by mass of person hitting it and if the person was short, likely to be sitting too close to the steering wheel - we have all seen it.
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I can't see the story with a quick search, but these stories do make you think (if you or your loved ones drive a small car) that chances are she'd have survived if she'd been in a bigger vehicle.
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Aircraft crash (20 seater or so) in USA some 10-15 yrs ago was due to overloading - too much luggage, freight or fuel - NO. It was due to the assumed weight of 12 st average when the average weight of the passengers was 2+ st heavier. 20 x 2 stome extra was effectively 3 extra bodies on board.
After this incident they changed the average weight to a more realistic (for USA anyway) of 14 stone.
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" Does that mean a person, say 15 stone, should loook to buying at least a
Astra/Focus sized car just in case they have a prang or do manufacturers of mid
sized cars assume that drivers are less than 12.5st?"
No, It means that they should lose some weight.
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>> No, It means that they should lose some weight.
>>
Oh dear, the wobblebottoms will hate you for that!
BUT you have a point - I often see big porkers in cars, and wonder how they can safely control the car when they seem to have difficulty even getting behind the wheel.
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In the account I read (in the Independent) the safety consultant's evidence did not mention the size of the car; he criticized its restraint system - seat belts and airbags - saying that even a correctly seated driver could hit the steering wheel before the airbag was sufficiently deployed to prevent it. The implication was that the driver of the other car - a Vectra - escaped serious injury not because her car was bigger but because its protection systems worked correctly.
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She crashed the car, she died. It happens. All this baloney about how safe it was, and tested with average people is just that, baloney. Her lawyer is looking to make money for the family over the fact she died.
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Are you arguing, Z, that there's nothing to be gained from analysing the performance of vehicles and their safety systems in real accidents? Saab, amongst others, would disagree: they've been doing it for decades and feeding the results back into their designs.
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>> Are you arguing, Z, that there's nothing to be gained from analysing the performance of
>> vehicles and their safety systems in real accidents? Saab, amongst others, would disagree: they've been
>> doing it for decades and feeding the results back into their designs.
Indeed not. Feedback from actual incidents is the most valuable of all data available and should be used where at all possible.
However it does not alter the fact she was obese and squeezed into an inappropriately sized vehicle for her size, and therefore should be discounted from the data.
There is one thing people dismiss tho, at their peril. None of us have a right to walk away from a car crash alive or unscathed. Manufacturers do their best to shield us from the laws of physics and our own stupidity, and any attempt in court to prove otherwise is merely blame shifting. As long as the car stops and steers as we command it, the responsibility for our lives and those of others lies with us.
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"She crashed the car, she died. It happens. All this baloney about how safe it
was, and tested with average people is just that, baloney. Her lawyer is looking to
make money for the family over the fact she died. "
Your analysis is correct
In view of the circumstance of the accident - she was driving on the wrong side of the road and hit an oncoming vehicle head it was clearly evident that her layers had to find someone other than the other driver involved to blame.. They chose a strategy that has already been used in the US courts i.e blame the manufacturers because their safety systems are not tested on obese people.
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The family gained no money through this, it was an inquest.
And you're wrong. This was a residential road at 30 miles per hour and no-one should have died.
It isn't baloney either - you are ignorant. Testing is a part of every day life to ensure that the likes of you and me are safe when doing anything.
The car manufacturer didn't test accordingly and the family want future passengers (providers of money to these manufacturers) to be aware so that overweight people know to consider the car restraint system when purchasing a vehicle.
Saab test ALL available crash-test dummy sizes to ensure and understand the implications to any of their drivers in the event of a collision. Any car manufacturer could do the same.
Get your facts right before you leave such flippant and ridiculous comments.
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She should have bought a SAAB then shouldn't she.
Overweight people should loose weight or accept the consequences.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 23 Dec 10 at 16:36
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A bit insensitive there Zero mate. We don’t know who cargirl is, and from the look of it, maybe she has some family connection to the case?
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Possibly, the thought had occurred to me, but this is an insensitive medium and it does not change the facts.
Whats going to happen about it anyway? The car is no longer made, why haul Puegeot over the coals?
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 23 Dec 10 at 17:06
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I do agree with your sentiment on the matter, but still...
>> but this is an insensitive medium
Fair point.
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>> The car is no longer made, why haul Puegeot over the coals?
One wonders whether the same applies to any other Peugots - that is, that they have not been safety-tested with heavier drivers at the wheel.
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Fair point, One wonders what NCAP specify for their safety awards,
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The woman involved weighed nearly sixteen stones. She was crammed into a very small and light car and hit a much heavier vehicle at speed. Unsurprising she came off worse.
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>> >> " Does that mean a person, say 15 stone, should loook to buying at least
>> >> a
>> >> Astra/Focus sized car just in case they have a prang or do manufacturers of mid
>> >> sized cars assume that drivers are less than 12.5st?"
>> No, It means that they should lose some weight.
>>
It depends on their height. If the person is 6'5" tall, 15 stone is just at the top of the normal range. www.weightlossresources.co.uk/body_weight/healthy_weight/chart.htm
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True, FB - I weigh about the same as Mrs Evans but I'd have to remove a limb to get anywhere near 78kg. But people my height sit further back from the wheel, so the airbag has those extra milliseconds in which to deploy completely. Purely personally, I'm more concerned about my head hitting the hard structure of the door or pillar, which the curtain airbag is intended to prevent. I've felt enough in a couple of mistimed ingresses and exits to convince me I wouldn't want to bang it any harder.
Back on topic. Safety systems are a selling point for modern cars. The point at issue here is whether Peugeot made claims about those in the 107 that weren't backed up with testing. The physical size of the car - at least in the accounts I've read - is not the issue. If I was Peugeot I'd be hurrying to show that my larger models had been tested with heavier dummies.
I've read elsewhere about the fat suits and reduced-mobility outfits Ford uses, but that as I understand it is for ergonomics rather than crash safety. Anyone know any more about other makers' testing?
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>>
>> Back on topic. Safety systems are a selling point for modern cars. The point at
>> issue here is whether Peugeot made claims about those in the 107 that weren't backed
>> up with testing. The physical size of the car - at least in the accounts
>> I've read - is not the issue. If I was Peugeot I'd be hurrying to
>> show that my larger models had been tested with heavier dummies.
>>
Given the amount of nonsense and legalese/ disclaimers in car user manuals these days I'm surprised they don't have to put maximum weight / height limits on occupants if it's that critical to the correct working of the safety features.
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Oops - the comment I was responding to was from l'Es, not FB's OP. Sorry.
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It appears that crash testing is not a simple matter, and can't be described in one sentence. www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/euroncap/dummies.html
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So she was
"was was sitting further forward in her seat than would normally be the case." "therefore have been very close to the steering wheel when the airbag inflated".
and driving on the wrong side of the road.
and she weighed nearly 16 stone
and Peugeot were responsible for her death in what way?
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Darwin's theories being observed in practice? Evolution is now seeing man-machine interaction as a contributory factor.
Last edited by: pmh on Thu 23 Dec 10 at 17:05
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Just a bit puzzled how newbie suddenly arrives, dives into the middle of along dead thread and attacks the jugular without prior knowledge.
I want to know more about cargirl87 before we give her the benefit of the doubt and treat her gently.
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>> Just a bit puzzled how newbie suddenly arrives, dives into the middle of along dead
>> thread and attacks the jugular without prior knowledge.
>>
100% classic troll behaviour then.
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Can we hold of making assumptions about new posters please..
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Hi.
It was my mother driving the Peugeot 107.
Yes she was overweight. But Peugeot should consider how they market their cars. It costs money to crash test all sized dummies, (hence it's a cheaper car). But if they told their buyers of the potential pitfalls then drivers can make an informed decision.
My mother was on the wrong side of the road because she passed out. She was driving safely prior to that.
Her injuries should have matched that of the driver of the car she hit (leg damage), but because the car safety system failed she died instantly. This was distressing to all those who tried to help her that day.
The insensitive comments on her are unhelpful really because they are ignorant and without substance.
But yes, she was overweight as well as young, caring and giving.
All I ask is that Peugeot re-assess their marketing strategy. In fact all manufacturers should be honest.
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Sorry about your mum, but that must be some sort of record!
Two posts in four and a half years!
Last edited by: Duncan on Mon 1 Jun 15 at 23:12
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At the end of the day, crash testing cars ISN'T compulsory for manufacturers.
Audi got caught out by this in May 2014, when UK Audi salespeople were claiming that all Audis were crash tested, when, in fact, the R8,A5, A7 and A8 have never been put through Euro NCAP tests.
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That's not the same as saying they've never been crash-tested.
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There is a serious issue here about how driving position vis a vis the steering wheel. It's to do with height and limb length so probably applies to women more than men.
Mrs B's weight at it's peak was not far off that of CarGirl's Mum. A larger lady for sure but not not US style obese. Because she has short legs she has to have the seat fully forward which in many cars left (and still leaves) her abdomen far too close to the wheel ie in the area where the airbag will deploy.
She's fine in both our Berlingos but the Xsara Picasso courtesy car we had the other week was really uncomfortable. So was a friend's Passat we drove last year while supporting them on a JoGLE ride. Both would have been potentially dangerous if the steering airbag went off.
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>> if they told their buyers of the potential pitfalls
.
.
>> that Peugeot re-assess their marketing strategy. In fact all manufacturers should be honest.
I'd probably expect both sides to think it through, actually.
I would expect Peugeot, and the others, to be more clear about what their safety testing approach really means - including that their approach tests for average size people (to be expected) and may fail for different size people (unexpected, at least by me, although still obvious, I guess).
Equally though, if I was a different sized person, be that large, tall, short, fat, etc, etc, I would expect to take some level of responsibility myself and find out what the implications were for me.
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Obesity can kill in road crashes. It isn't that the seatbelts give way, it's that obesity itself produces a disproportionately weak musculature, which can result in a torn or ruptured gut and life-threatening peritonitis.
A friend and long-time lodger, a controversial figure in the US where he had minor notoriety, died like that, back in the US after his time here. He ate too much and was greedy.
You don't hear much about peritonitis or lockjaw in Europe these days, but oddly they are still encountered in the scientifically advanced US.
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Advertising a car fully tested as suitable for fat people is going to be a great selling point.
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>> Advertising a car fully tested as suitable for fat people is going to be a
>> great selling point.
True in a way but enough of us are some way off ideal for re-assurance to be welcome.
As stated above I suspect the issue is as much about stature as weight and that somebody of WdeB's build might have fared better than the unfortunate lady in this case.
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If the poster on here who claims it was her mothers is who she claims to be then she has my deepest sympathy.
Alas however she is too close to events to be rational.
There is no way that a large fat person is ever going to be safe in a microcar like the 107, and to expect someone to suffer the same injuries as the other driver in a much larger car is misguided at best.
As for "she was driving safely on the right side of the road till she passed out"
Speechless.
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>Her injuries should have matched that of the driver of the car she hit (leg damage), but because
>the car safety system failed she died instantly.
I'm a little surprised that anyone can expect a small vehicle to provide the same level of crash protection as a much larger one constructed to similar standards. All things being equal, the more deformable metal you have in front of you the better off you're likely to be.
I applaud any efforts to raise awareness of the problem but I don't think that singling out Peugeot is the right way to go about it.
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>>
>> I'm a little surprised that anyone can expect a small vehicle to provide the same
>> level of crash protection as a much larger one constructed to similar standards. All things
>> being equal, the more deformable metal you have in front of you the better off
>> you're likely to be.
>>
A few years ago now, the TV programme Fifth Gear (I think it was) carried out some, not very scientific tests, to compare the effects of crashes on different size cars. The results were fairly predictable.
The small cars crumpled in an almost frightening way. The big cars, although the boot and bonnet areas folded, had plenty of deformable space before the impact intruded on the passenger compartment.
As I say, obvious, really.
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Too late for the edit.
I think this is the clip that I remember:-
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSEl2ueCATs
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>> Too late for the edit.
>>
>> I think this is the clip that I remember:-
>>
>> www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSEl2ueCATs
On the other hand someone crashed a smart at high speed ( 70mph I think) into a solid object at high speed as a test. The space inside the passenger cell was in tact, but the high g forces meant your insides turned to mush.
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I've just re-read the statement that "she was driving on the right side of the road".
Everyone has taken that to mean she was driving on the wrong side, but did it really mean she was driving on the correct side?
Not relevant to the "driving with an inadequately secured heavy load" debate, but perhaps relevant to the circumstances of the accident.
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>> Everyone has taken that to mean she was driving on the wrong side, but did
>> it really mean she was driving on the correct side?
CarGirl's account suggests the lady became ill, she says 'passed out', and then veered over the centre line .
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You're right, semantics. Sorry! Yes, my mother was driving on the correct side of the road. We believe she became unwell and veered over.
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>> On the other hand someone crashed a smart at high speed ( 70mph I think)
>> into a solid object at high speed as a test.
That was 5th Gear too.
youtu.be/mnI-LiKCtuE
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>> As I say, obvious, really.
ISTR that the Euro NCAP scores should only be compared within groups of similar cars. I can't see a prominent reference to this on the current website which is interesting.
www.euroncap.com/en
In any case, I always thought the scores should be absolute rather than relative. If you start by picking the size/type of car you want, then comparing different models is fine. But if your buying decision was primarily driven by safety, you'd want to see the absolute assessments.
Everything else being equal, a good big'un has to be better than a good little 'un for crashing in.
The AA FAQs still say -
Are large cars safer than small cars?
In a frontal crash between two cars, occupants in the heavier car or the one with higher structures will tend to fare better.
The influence of mass cannot be simulated in a barrier test and Euro NCAP recommends comparison only between cars which are of a similar mass (+/- 150kg) and in the same category.
Can results be compared between groups?
Accurate comparisons can only be made between cars in the same group. The frontal test reflects a crash between two similar cars.
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Take it a step further and in car v lorry or solid object the car comes off second best. Size matters, you can't beat physics.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Thu 4 Jun 15 at 11:54
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This is why I always think about the default purchase of a first car for a young learner to be a small one is rather flawed.
This is a group that is known to have the most likely chance of first accidents and they get behind the wheel of a tiny car that inevitably would protect them less.
I understand the cheap to insure / cheap to run argument, but also this seems to keep the value of small cars high, whereas a medium sized car might be a bit more expensive to insure, but age / mileage-wise might be cheaper to buy to offset this somewhat.
I have a daughter who at 15 is not too many years away from getting behind the wheel of a car, and I would start by looking for something more Focus-sized than Fiesta / Ka-sized for her first car.
I remember posting a similar recommendation for someone else on here when we had our Almera that such a car could be a good starting point for a new driver. Highly rated NCAP rating and just more space and mass around you in the event of a nasty prang. Cheap as chips to buy and run too.
The family of the lady in question has my every sympathy, and no amount of any of us commenting on the facts of the specific case will bring her back, but it is often not considered that bigger = safer on the roads, and also there seems to be little widespread knowledge that a 4 star NCAP small car is not automatically equivalent to a 4 star large 4x4 car.
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> a 4 star NCAP small car is not automatically equivalent to a 4 star large 4x4 car.
Especially if the small car is hit by the large car.
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It comes down to insurance in the end, for youngsters' cars. I looked at larger cars for my son but insurance was astronomical for all but the lowest groups, and there were not that many cars to choose from. We ended up with a Panda.
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The NCAP ratings are relevant to the sector, so a four star executive car would probably be a better place to be than a five star supermini.
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>>
>> I understand the cheap to insure / cheap to run argument,
>>
It's not necessarily even true.
The cheapest car for our daughter to drive was a 20-year old Volvo estate with a 2.3 litre engine. Unfortunately she didn't want to drive it. No street cred, hence ironically an excellent accident record amongst 18-year olds.
So we have to pay twice as much for a low-rated micro car.
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"The cheapest car for our daughter to drive was a 20-year old Volvo estate with a 2.3 litre engine."
But presumably it wasn't in the lowest group? I'd no idea insurers considered anything else, although clearly yours had thought it through. Was a broker involved?
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Thank you for your comments.... And your points here are interesting. There isn't enough knowledge really on the general safety of cars.
In the court hearing after my mother's accident a lot of insurance companies were there; obviously concerned with this case.
There were experts in car safety and there are serious flaws in the existing system. But - companies like Peugeot pump millions in to worthwhile cases to stop reputation issues. Therefore money will stop cases going further and more sharing of the issues.
If this makes sense!
Some interesting comments on this site.
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I'm only singling out Peugeot because of their reaction and attitude compared to say Toyota's. Peugeot were pulled up for 'failure of safety system'. They chucked millions at it then so that it couldn't go further.
They lied and deferred throughout.
However, I appreciate everyone's more sensible and constructive comments (and yours... I'm not saying yours is anything other than interesting).The knobs blabbering on about weight are missing my point. But yes it is a complex situation.
However, I read the other day that a Community Police officer also lost her life in a similar situation in a Peugeot 107.
Lastly, experts would have expected the same injuries in both drivers of this collision based on NCAP testing, collision course and other facts that they consider. The safety system failed.
All
I'm saying is that if you're not knowledgeable you wouldn't know enough about car choice and science, safety etc.
But obviously now I wouldn't recommend larger people in small cars. However I see it all the time.
Last edited by: CarGirl76 on Thu 11 Jun 15 at 03:43
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I am in a better place to be rational on this. I enjoy facts and spent a lot of time with experts that have studied car safety for decades and they understood the features of my mother's accident intricately.
It was one amazing policeman that spotted inconsistencies enough to pick up on the errors in the car safety system.
I have found the whole experience interesting as well as gut wrenching.
But I appreciate your view.
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>> Obesity can kill in road crashes. It isn't that the seatbelts give way, it's that obesity itself produces
>> a disproportionately weak musculature
A 30-stone colleague in the early 00s crashed a Peugeot 405 quite firmly. He suffered internal injuries and a broken wrist as the airbag had nowhere to go. Sadly he passed away a few weeks later.
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The 107 is (was) the same vehicle as the Aygo and the Citroen C1. IIRC, the design is Toyota's.
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>> The 107 is (was) the same vehicle as the Aygo and the Citroen C1. IIRC,
>> the design is Toyota's.
A good point. But I suppose if Peugeot wants to stick its badge on something, then it has to stand by it.
I had one as a courtesy car for three weeks. No idea I was 'too heavy' for it. An impressive little thing but made unpleasant by its throbbing, headache inducing 3 cylinder engine.
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Not to cause a row, but I enjoyed my little drive in someone's rented similar Citroen C1 a few years back. I have a thing for thrummy 3 cylinder engines. I love that raspy exhaust note mid rev range on that range of cars. The C1 obviously seemed livelier than my then 1.6 Mitsi Carisma, had a nice chunky feel and it helped that it was 10 years younger. Not ideal for a daily ride now but wouldnt mind hooning about in one for the afternoon.
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I don't really disagree, I liked it, but the drone got me down after a few days.
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Yes, Toyota sent a representative to court every day - they were impressive
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Peugeot - Pug 107 - not tested for people over 12st 4lbs - Old Navy
