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Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 10:12:45 +0200
From: "KBB" <kentbassbutlernopsamo.com>
Subject: Re: Opinions on the 1999 Saab 9-3?


> Take a look at http://www.carsafety.org/ictl.htm (Insurance Institute for > Highway Safety) for some info on the 900. Surprise it's the safest - lowest > injury rate - midsize? > You will also find that the 9000 is number 3 for midsize luxury cars. Not > bad for a 15 year old design! > (The collision rate in the level of BMWs and Mercedes says more about the > drivers than the cars?!) Again again , as always, those numbers have more to do with the drivers , the driving style and the amount of driving. Those are 3 huge variable and are very different from car to car and from brand to brand. > Even though Saabs might not be rated highly in every crach tests, I have > never ever seen any statistics from real use where Saab (at least for the > last two decades) has not been ranked among the safest. > Please give us some reference where the 9000 has been rated poorly! Auto Motor Und Sport (AMS), one of the leading magazine (german) of the automottive world, was the first one to point to the lack of meaning of those statistics : they were the first to come out in the September7 1990 issue with the filmed results of crash tests of 8 cars to see how they would handle offset crashes, the ones that really happen in real world ( crash with a pole, for example). At the time, governments were using crashes again flat barrier to measure the likelyhood of injury, which was ridiculous since cars don't get involved in crashes against a flat barrier that is perpendicular to the car !!!!!! In that issue of AMS, they tested among other the Fiat Croma : after a crash at 55 kmh, the dummy was crushed between the steering wheel and the seat: they could not even remove the dummy from the car !!!! A human being, they said, would have been killed instantly on impact. On the contrary, in the Volvo 740, the front of the car had collapsed, as intented, but the interior was intact, the steering wheel of the Volvo had barely moved, and the driver would have walked away with minor injuries.( So was the BMW 5 and the Benz 300E) Anyway, in their April 3, 1992, AMS tested the Volvo 850 and the Saab 9000CS, which had just being stenghtened for the model year I believe ( it was the last face lift of the 9000, I believe) Results of the tests: surprisingly the 850 was slightly worse the older 740 but the 9000, eventhough it performed better than the Fiat Croma, was pretty bad : looking at the car after the very severe impact, it is unlikely the driver wouldn't sustain some fatal injuries : the steering wheel had moved up and backward over 20cm in each direction !!!!!!! The funny thing in this post is that real-world statistics is being used without much understanding: THE ONLY WAY TO CHECK THE SAFETY OF A CAR IS TO HAVE THE CAR INVOLVED IN CRASH TESTS AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO THE REAL WORLD. That is why after years of using the statistics you mentionned earlier, organizations are coming up with more accurate ways of mesuring the safety of a car, without the driver factor :that is why IIHS and EuroNCAP are simuilating OFFSET crashes and side crashes.In those crashes, extremely well done and without doubts, the 900 and ,to a lesser extend, the 9-3 did not do well . > The fact that the 9000 was based on a smaller and weaker basic design > (Alfa-Romeo/Fiat) is one of the reasons why it's so safe - all structures > but the safety cage work as good energy absorbers. > > All Saabs are designed to be safe - in real accidents rather than crash > tests > > Jan Soderberg > >

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