In December of 2010, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety created a list of what they considered to be the safest vehicles of 2011. In April of 2011, they released their list of the safest electric cars. This is the first time electric cars have been safety tested by an insurance group.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is non-profit, independent, scientific group. It also is an educational organization. This group is very dedicated to reducing the number of deaths, injuries, and property damage that occurs due to automobile crashes that happen on the nation’s highways. This group is not affiliated with any particular insurance company. They use data that comes from insurance companies in order to determine losses, (both in terms of people as well as in terms of finances). When they come to a conclusion about the safety of a particular vehicle, they make that information accessible to the general public.
Last year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tested sixty-six different vehicles for their Top Safety Pick award for 2011. They tested out forty different makes and models of cars, twenty-five different SUVs and one minivan.
These vehicles were judged on how well they protected passengers in the case of front impact crash, side impact crash, a rollover, and a rear impact crash. The vehicles were required to have electronic stability control and a crash avoidance feature in order to be considered. They also added the new criteria of having a good rating for performance in a roof strength test.
There weren’t any electric vehicles involved in those tests, though. Recently, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released the results of the very first independently preformed crash test involving electric vehicles. The electric vehicles were subjected to the same kinds of criteria that the vehicles in the Top Safety Pick award for 2011 test were checked on.
There was one rather interesting additional precaution that was included as part of the tests run on electric vehicles. After the crash, the very first person to approach the vehicle used a volt meter to find out if any electrical charge was transferred to the body or the chassis of the vehicle itself. They learned that in the case of a crash, the vehicle’s automatic shutdown features that disengage the high voltage batteries functioned as they were supposed to. No electrical fires occurred.
The Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf earned the top ratings in this year’s crash testing of electric vehicles. The Leaf runs entirely from battery power, and has a range of about 100 miles. The Volt is a hybrid that can run for about forty miles on an electrical charge before it switches over to the car’s small gas engine.
Image by mariordo59 on Flickr