Smart enough

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: May 16, 2008

Rising gas prices have made what would have been a niche car in congested cities into something we could see more of in the Dan River Region.
Danville’s Harvey Flanagan wanted a smart fortwo since seeing one in Rome in 2002. About a year ago, he was finally able to reserve his own when smart decided to export the two-seat, three-cylinder, 71-horsepower car to the United States.
“It drives like a dream,” said Flanagan, who recently took delivery of his new car. “Allow yourself an extra 10 to 14 minutes if you go because someone’s going to stop you and talk to you about it.”
The buzz that turns routine trips into adventures comes from the smart fortwo’s size — it’s the smallest new car available for sale in this country. That’s why the big question surrounding the smart fortwo is safety — not only about the fortwo, but for all smaller cars.
Recently, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tested the 2008 smart fortwo and gave it high marks in front and side crash tests. But those results were a silver cloud with a dark lining.
“All things being equal in safety, bigger and heavier is always better,” Institute President Adrian Lund said in a news release. “But among the smallest cars, the engineers of the smart did their homework and designed a high level of safety into a very small package.”
That has to reassure new smart owners, as well as other car shoppers hoping that they won’t have to trade safety for better fuel economy.
The IIHS reports that every type of passenger vehicle has become safer over the years, but “the risk of death is higher in crashes of smaller, lighter models. For vehicles one to three years old during 2006, minicars experienced 106 driver deaths per million registered vehicles compared with 69 driver deaths in large cars.”
If today’s higher fuel prices become the norm and not an expensive aberration, we can expect to see more small cars for sale in this country — and more features built into those cars to make them safer.
As more of us look for ways to use less gas, the great news is small cars are becoming safer cars. The road to an energy-independent America will probably be filled with more cars like the one Danville’s Harvey Flanagan recently brought home.