Shopsmith Forums

Well, I did the research and must admit the Smart car didn't end up looking like a squashed can of tomatoes after a crash like the Isetta from the '50s. Rather, it looked like a badly dented pingpong ball. But, like most things, the devil is in the details.

Comments about the crash test conducted by the Insurance Institute were contained in an article by CNN Money dot com that you can read in its entirety here -- http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/14/autos/s ... /index.htm -- In a crash test conducted by the Insurance Institute, the Smart earned a "Good" rating but an Institute spokesman also commented that "it is simply too small to be considered safe under all conditions, including highway driving."


Also according to that article, in the NHTSA front crash test, "the [Smart] ForTwo earned the top rating of "Five Stars" for driver protection, but just "Three Stars" for passenger protection. Few vehicles today get ratings as low as three stars in NHTSA's front crash tests."


The article goes on to say, results from front impact crash tests, no matter how they are conducted, cannot be compared between cars of different sizes. In a real-world front crash, occupants in a smaller vehicle would experience greater crash forces when hitting a larger vehicle going in the opposite direction.

And, the Smart ForTwo earned the best possible ratings in side impact tests conducted by both NHTSA and IIHS, but in both cases, the door became unlatched during the crash tests. While that didn't affect the final score in either case, it's not ideal, said IIHS's Lund.

In one video of the Smart car crashing, it got a "poor" rating in a crash test with a Mercedes. The video is here -- http://www.guzer.com/videos/smart-car-crash-test.php

Here's another video, of a Smart in a crash -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju6t-yyoU8s -- the conclusion being that the car might survive a high-speed crash, but you likely wouldn't. This is the video where the passenger door still opened after the crash. I guess that means the EMTs won't have to use the jaws-of-life to extricate the bodies.

After doing my due diligence on the Smart, I'd still not want to ride in one. At 33 MPG city, it's hardly worth the risk in my opinion.

The only reason I would get in one is to drive it into weird spots that a normal car wouldn't fit

Other than that, I will keep my truck, which I am pretty sure could haul the smart car in the bed.

Here in Maryland regular gas is running around 3.84 to 3.87 a gallon. And, I noticed that diesel went up to 4.15 a gallon the other day. So, I see from some of the comments here that is about right with other locations in the US.

The big kicker is that state lawmakers here wanted to increase fuel taxes. The legislatures pushed real hard to get this through but in the end dropped the idea due to the economy. So, they raised vehicle registration fees and the cost of tags instead. Go figure.

Now the ethanol thing is another story. Here stations are required to sell 10% ethanol by volume to all gas being sold in the state. The reasoning being emmissions pollution. While there is some truth to this, the thing they are not telling everybody is that ethanol is still producing pollution through emmissions. It is just a different form of pollution. So, it really is just a trade off from one type of emmissions to another. Now for the big kicker. Ethanol is all together less efficient as a fuel than gas. So then you are using more gas to produce the same amount of energy for driving here and there. So, in the end the whole idea of cutting down on emmisions becomes a mood point. Now they are taking about increasing it to 20% by volume.

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joedw00 wrote:Everyone must have ordered gas on the same day, because it went up 10 cents last night everywhere. I was wrong on the price, it was $3.55. as of this morning it is $3.65 all over town. Now how can that be that everyone had to raise it 10 cents????????:(

It just jumped up another 10 cents. It is now $3.75

Here is a site where you can find the prices of gasoline/diesel all over the country.

$4.20.9 here today. I may go buy a couple of quarts tomorrow.

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$4.29 here. One of our teachers has a smart car. Looks like a go-cart on steroids.

BPR

ryanbp01 wrote:$4.29 here. One of our teachers has a smart car. Looks like a go-cart on steroids.

BPR

Maybe I best go fill up! $3.749 here!

It is sad that I was slightly excited to find gas for 3.99 a gallon here as it was 4.19 at every other station. The fact that I was kind of glad to see the 3.99 makes me sick.