Shocker: Small Cars Don't Protect as Well in Collisions

ARLINGTON, Virginia — Turns out your parents were right after all: Big cars really do protect you better in a collision than small cars. Or so says the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which tested pairs of large and small cars from three manufacturers — Daimler, Honda and Toyota.

The IIHS performed car-to-car crash tests between the 2009 Toyota Camry and Yaris, the 2009 Honda Accord and Fit and the 2009 Mercedes-Benz C300 and Smart Fortwo. While all vehicles performed relatively well in the institute's frontal offset barrier test, all three small cars received poor ratings in the crash tests with midsize cars.

"There are good reasons people buy minicars," said IIHS President Adrian Lund. "They're more affordable, and they use less gas. But the safety tradeoffs are clear from our new tests. Equally clear are the implications when it comes to fuel economy. If automakers downsize cars so their fleets use less fuel, occupant safety will be compromised."

As it does in the frontal barrier tests, the IIHS rated performance in the 40-mph car-to-car tests based on measured intrusion into the occupant compartment, as well as forces recorded on the driver dummy and movement of the dummy during the impact. According to the test results, the likelihood of injury goes up in the smaller vehicle.

"Though much safer than they were a few years ago, minicars as a group do a comparatively poor job of protecting people in crashes, simply because they're smaller and lighter," Lund said.

Inside Line says: Sometimes the conventional wisdom turns out to be correct. — Paul Lienert, Correspondent