New study focuses on untested passenger side - Automotive News
IIHS began the additional testing after discovering that some updated models had received structural reinforcements to improve crashworthiness on the driver side, where the test is normally conducted, but not on the passenger side. IIHS spokesman Russ Rader described the added testing as a "research project" intended to find out how widespread the practice is and to ensure that automakers are engineering crashworthiness improvements to both sides of a vehicle. The project's findings could prompt IIHS to add random passenger-side small-overlap crash tests to its testing regimen. "If we find that this appears to be a widespread issue, we could conduct the small-overlap test program in the same way we do the roof strength program, which is we periodically and randomly switch the side we're testing," Rader said. Lawmakers and safety advocates have long lamented that IIHS ratings' public-sector counterpart, the federal government's five-star crashworthiness rating, has lost its teeth because the testing criteria haven't been updated for years. Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers proposed a bill to require that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration go beyond crash tests and account for crash-avoidance technology such as automatic braking in its rating system. Source: www.autonews.com
