Team-BHP - Does more heavy mean more safe??

safety doesn't comes from weight! until and unless your Maruti800 is as robust as a RoadRoller!

safety comes from various technicalities and complex things.
crumple zones are one such thing, besides that airbags and ABS etc comes into play for safety.

heavier vehicles have a tendency to go out of control when that is the foremost need!

F1 cars are not heavy at all and still they are pretty much safer than our normal cars. the crumple zone in its nose takes all the beating but saves the driver.

recently i saw an accident in which NHC had crashed into the rear wheels of a TATA407 while both were crossing a red light in night perpendicular to each other.
NHC hit 407's rear wheels so hard that they got separated from the chasis and whole truck skidded on the road and made big marks on road and landed onto the divider in the middle of the road. whereas the lighter, infact much lighter, NHC was on the road itself, in very same position of the crash and its whole bonnet crumpled inside and take whole beating, but saved the passengers. also its windscreen was intact!

so imho, heavy is not safe anymore. that was only in historic times when no one knew about such complex safety gadegets and norms.

No way, More woeght means more Moment of inertia, means more energy while in motion. In an event of collision, or panic breaking, so much energy needs to be absorbed.

But looking at the otherway, safety add-ons and the more robust cabins need more metal and other materials, which make them heavy. and you need a bigger engine to take that wieght, ang bigger engine is heavier.. so goes on...

I agree with Revharder.

Rather than assume a vehicle is safe because of its kerb weight, buyers should look for independent and respected ratings (like EuroNCAP) to figure out how safe their car is.

But since EuroNCAP gives points for safety equipment like side and head airbags that are standard equipment on even hatches in Europe, but which are missing even in some high-end cars in India, there is a desperate need for a reputed Indian agency to award ratings for cars sold in India, based on tests.

Till then, a lot of folks will be fooled by the heavier=safer equation.

I voted yes! assuming we are talking about cars outer body strenght and material used to build

It's simple drop a hammer or dead weight from a certain height on a fiber body and drop the same weight on a steel/metal body - result will speak for itself

Strong body = better impact resistance = more safe

On the other hand if the car has same outer body material and a heavier engine then i think the weight will have -ve impact... ie less safe

Not necessarily. It all comes down to the fact that how well the car is designed and the kind of material used. Consider the race cars (WRC) they try to keep it light, but i guess they are the safest cards around. The driver just walks out of accidents that could have been total wipe out in ordinary heavier cars.

According to me the safety also depends on how the safety features of the car is used.
Some case in points. The Ford Ikon crash reported in the forum only thing that saved the
front passengers were the seat belts. So even without having air bags , ABS and the works,
the basic safety feature like seat belts helped --
yeah exceptions are always there
Old crash of Princess Diana -- in one of the safest cars in the world, with ABS,
7 /8 AirBags all aroud -- didnt survive because
they didnt use the seatbelts -- the driver survived -- seat belts again.
So it's not whether the car is heavy or light, it is upto the drivers and passengers to define their safety.

heavy is safe is like saying quantity is all that matters, and quality plays no role ...

a heavy vehicle might provide you with more stability on road, or might protect you from minor dents or scratches, but of what use is that weight if it hinders you from making a last-minute ditch to prevent an oncoming accident ? - or if that heavy body transmits all the impact to the passengers inside and itself remains stable, while passengers are shaken up badly.

heavy is safe is a myth which should be done away with, and people should use other means like crash-ratings to judge the safety of a car.