With the advancement of society, domestic consumers have become an important reference for people in addition to considering whether the appearance is beautiful, the price is cheap, and the performance is excellent. Automakers are also beginning to work hard to promote how safe their cars are and how to make them feel at ease. However, overwhelming publicity often leaves consumers fascinated, and most car consumers have more or less cognitive misunderstandings about car safety.
"Most of the cars are safe now?"
“Is your car safe?” When someone asks you this question, I am afraid that many people’s answers are yes, but the facts may be beyond your expectations.
As China enters the automobile society, the safety performance of vehicles has become one of the main factors considered by industry insiders to evaluate a car and consumers when they choose to buy a new car.
According to reports, there are many factors affecting the safety of automobiles. The professional sayings are divided into active safety and passive safety. The so-called active safety, the popular understanding is that the vehicle has the function to maximize the driver's operating intentions and keep the vehicle away from dangerous situations. For example: whether the brake system is sensitive, how much the vehicle brakes after braking, whether the brake system is stable, the performance of A BS and EBD, the high speed of the vehicle and the smoothness during cornering. Passive safety is the performance of protecting the occupants after an accident, such as the design of the door, the steel structure of the car body, the number of airbags and air curtains, the design of the seat belt system, and so on.
In the eyes of many people, after years of exploration and development, the quality of cars, especially passenger cars, can be trusted, but the quality of a car does not mean that the car is enough to ensure the safety of drivers and passengers. The recent data shows a cruel fact that the Chinese are paying a high price for traffic safety. According to the statistics of the health department of our country, the number of people who died in motor vehicle traffic accidents in 2012 reached an amazing 166,906.
An industry insider analyzed that although the health department of China is not a road safety authority, it does not specifically count the number of road safety deaths, nor is it the official publisher of traffic accident data. However, the health department should count the causes of deaths in residents, and under the “injury” category of death, there is a small item called “motor vehicle traffic accident”. Therefore, the above statistics are relatively credible. In addition to the need to improve the road traffic safety awareness of the Chinese people, whether the safety performance of the car is reliable is also an important link affecting the road traffic safety situation.
Feng Fei, director of the Industrial Policy Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, once commented that before 2020, China’s motor vehicle ownership will show a rapid growth trend except for agricultural vehicles, so China’s road traffic will be under tremendous pressure in the next few decades. .
In the face of the insecurity caused by the surge in motor vehicles, automakers have also begun to make new efforts in car safety. As the leader in automotive safety, Volvo recently launched the all-new XC 90, providing the industry's leading and comprehensive safety configuration, including two new world-first safety inventions – the Pavement Deviation Protection System and Automatic braking technology at intersections.
"The bigger the sales, the safer the car is."
At present, China's automobile production has exceeded 20 million, accounting for 24% of global production, ranking first in the world. However, for consumers who want to buy a car, which car is safer in the face of more and more brands and models?
According to a survey data, Chinese people like to buy cars and watch sales. Most people are often influenced by the majority when they buy a car, thus following the public's thoughts or behaviors, which is also known as the "congregation effect." People will follow what everyone agrees and will deny their opinions by default. In most cases, people believe that the larger the sales volume and the more prosperous the sales, the higher the safety factor. Because the mentality of buying a car is often a lot of time, anyway, so many people buy it, certainly not wrong, instead of choosing a car according to their own needs and practical use. It is also under the influence of this mentality that many old models such as Santana and Jetta are in the top of the sales list in China.
However, in the eyes of the above-mentioned industry, the actual sales volume does not mean that the safety factor of all hot models is greater. One model can gain market recognition and achieve sales success. The reason is comprehensive and comprehensive. It includes the quality, price, brand and sales channels of the car. Of course, it is also inseparable from its strong propaganda and marketing strategy. The larger the sales volume, the more illusion that the safety factor will be given to consumers.
For example, the data provided by the NCAP channel of the car network in the past few years shows that the Chevrolet Lechi and the Chery QQ 6, which have large sales in small cars, have only two stars in collision test results, and the poorly sold Geely Panda. The model received five stars in a crash test in 2009. As for the evergreens Santana and Jetta, they were born nearly 20 years earlier than the NCAP crash test, and almost no passive safety factors were considered. Even the famous BMW 3 Series was only one and a half stars when it first tested the European N CA P in the early 1990s.
Under the help of the "consensus effect", another misunderstanding when people buy a car is that the fare increase must be a good car. In fact, the marketing method of fare increase is started by Guangqi Honda from the Accord. As a marketing technique, Guangben’s road has been very successful, creating an image of its own tall. This trick was later learned by the Volkswagen and Ford. Under the mentality of the Chinese people chasing up and not chasing down, the situation of supply exceeding demand is created. But should such a fare increase vehicle be a good car? The self-ignition of the Tiguan and the broken shaft of the wing tiger It is not as simple as a case.
“The higher the crash test score, the safer it is”?
I believe that when you buy a car, the NCAP crash test score is an indispensable parameter. Many consumers with higher safety requirements will choose the model according to the NCAP crash test results. Many people think that high star rating is equal to high security. There are not many people who blindly believe in star theory.
NCAP is the abbreviation of English N ew C arA s-sessm ent Program, which is the new car crash test. This is a harsh and rigorous testing organization. The United States, Europe, and Japan all have mature regulations that regularly conduct crash tests on new cars in their home country to check the degree of protection that the various safety devices of the car give to the occupants during the collision and the damage caused by the vehicles.
So, the safer the NCAP is, the safer it is? The answer is, not necessarily. There is no doubt that NCAP has a certain reference for the safety of cars, but it does not mean that high-star cars will not be dangerous, or the danger will be greatly reduced. This is because NCAP crash tests are not directly comparable to accidents in life. In the NCAP crash test, there are fixed standards for the test object, the speed of the vehicle or the collision method, which is far from the complex collision in daily traffic accidents.
For example, in the European E-NCAP crash test, the impact source of the collision test it performed is fixed, or can be understood as the same quality object as the vehicle being hit. So in actual driving? The above-mentioned people in the industry said that in the event of an actual traffic accident, especially in the most common two-car collision accidents, the larger-sized models will have a great advantage, and the smaller-sized models will share Greater energy, which is determined by the momentum of the collision and the law of conservation of kinetic energy. At this time, the star rating can not reflect the safety of the car, and the quality of the car has become a major factor affecting safety.
IIH S (American Highway Insurance Association) has done such a test: three sets of models (each consisting of one big car and one small car) respectively carry out frontal 40% overlap car and car collision test, these three The trolley and the three carts performed well in the previous 40% overlap deformable barrier impact test. However, in the car-to-collision test, the deformation of the cart is small, and the damage of the dummy in the car is also small, but the car is seriously deformed, and the damage of the dummy in the car is also very serious.
In addition, some consumers may pay more attention to foreign test results such as NCAP in Europe, but because the standards are not the same, the same models, the configuration at home and abroad will certainly not be the same.
However, the industry source said that no matter how safe the car is, there is always a skeleton of a steel plate, and good driving habits and alertness are the basis for ensuring safety.