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    "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    I think Chevy takes the cake as far as unwanted "safety" features go with the new Vette. Taken from the recent Car and Driver roadster comparison :

    1) "The trunk won't open until the car is shut off"

    2) "the nav system refuses programming while the car is rolling, even at crawl speeds when you're desperately searching for an alternate route around an L.A. freeway logjam."

    3) And most onerous of all, the push-button doors won't release until the shifter is in reverse. Pull the emergency door release on the floor to exit without a lawyer's permission.

    Discuss

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    its stupid...what more do we need to discuss?

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Ironic to say the least since the vette is not precisely at the forefront of car safety...

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Quote:
    Carlos from Spain said:
    Ironic to say the least since the vette is not precisely at the forefront of car safety...




    What do you mean ? It's hydroformed frame rails introduced in 1997 on the C5 are supposed to endow it with amazing structural integrity in offset frontal crashes and allows it to weigh in at 3130 lbs even with all the heavy stuff added on the coming Z06 .They actually lightened the car from C5 to C6 generation despite more content whereas the 997 and the F430 both blamed 50-100 pounds of their weight gain to meet current crashworthiness standards .( See how the F430 Spider will weigh 3500 lbs in US fully loaded trim - porky - almost as much as a Turbo ) The new C6 has added side airbags which the Ferrari line still hasn't introduced of the F430.

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    This for example, from JohnnyNarcosis on another site:

    "Well, since you're interested let's use the 997 as the bench mark. ( Though I do not agree with your analogy of 997 v. Corvette or 997S v. Z06. I believe the analogy is Mustang v. Corvette, Viper GTS v. Corvette Z06, and BMW E46 M3 w/ Dinan S2 package v. 997 as they both have 4 seats. The GT3 is in a class by itself. )

    Corvette chassis design - SLA forged aluminum upper and pressed lower wishbone control arms front and REAR. That translates that each corner of Corvette is supported by two ball studs alone front and REAR, the lower on the control arm and the upper on the knuckle, and guided by one tie rod end piece. The compromise is that at a minimum the rear should be multilink for strength like the 997. ( If it were to win prizes, the front of Corvette, with all the engine weight, should be multilink, too. )

    Next, and this is amazing to me, Corvette suspension does NOT have coil springs over gas charged shocks. Corvette has two fiberglass leaf springs, one in the front and one in the back, that run side to side like two plastic archery bows turned upside down and mounted in the center with two brackets front and rear. The two tips of each bow have little screw-in "furniture feet" on the ends that push down on the lower control arm to support the weight of the car. The gas charged shocks dampen against each half of the upside down leaf spring pushing on each corner. The compromise is that the suspension should be coil springs over gas charged shocks or struts like a 997.

    Brakes. Here I'm hoping that GM improved on the C5 but... a C5 Corvette had two piston front and one piston rear "clam shell" aluminum calipers, the weak part of which was directly over the heat vents integrated in the rotors. The rotors get hot and blow the heat on the thin caliper aluminum and the calipers would spread like prying open a clam. The compromise is that the brake calipers should, at a minimum, be four piston front and rear "mono-block" like a 997.

    Next is safety. Go to the Corvette website and search around for the safety efforts.... You'll be there along time because there isn't ANY! Nothing. Corvette is a huge plastic easter egg shell, shaped like a car and mounted on a frame. And the passenger compartment doors? If you take the interior door panels off a Corvette you'll be looking straight through a hollow plastic door form at the outside body plastic. Literally, and I'm being serious, you could launch a wood ball bat straight though a Corvette's door anywhere... unless the window was down as then the glass might slow the bat. And the whole of the passenger compartment is like that. Now go to the Porsche website and search for the 997's safety efforts. What you'll find in the 997 is, in my opinion, worth the extra $30,000 alone. Three level "safety cage", latch integrated boron steel beams in the door, 18 gauge steel body panels forming an impact "cell", thoracic protecting sideair bags, etc. It matters to me.

    The one thing Corvette has done right... the modern Corvette push rod motor. Definitely NOT a compromise. I could go on about that motor but that's probably enough for now."

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Intuitively, I'd bet against safety systems engineering of any American/Italian car, but IIHS crash injury claims data for '01-'03 cars shows 911, Corvette and SL to be among safest cars on planet in terms of low rate of post-crash injury claims. Perhaps many of the more exuberantly driven Vettes are uninsured and therefore don't show up in the data?

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Most new Corvette and 911 drivers are the same lower risk insured group - guys in their 30s to 50s -the Vette group skewing older - not the group who are out drinking and drag racing on some dark industrial road Sat night trying to impress their girlfriends. My Corvette and 911 insur bills were both below $1000/yr, even with my Turbo .

    As noted before, Porsche and Ferrari in their latest versions had to add yet another round of pig iron to make their cars pass the same safety requiements put on GM. The C6 Corvette didn't have to , as their 1997 frame / body structure is still good enough. I'm sure these safety changes will bring us the 3700 lb 997 Turbo.

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Quote:
    VKSF said:
    Intuitively, I'd bet against safety systems engineering of any American/Italian car,



    Since Audi bought Lamborghini, the Gallardo is the first and only Italian exotic sports-car with head/thorax airbags.

    The C5 had no side airbags. The C6 has side thorax airbags optional on the coupe ( ) and standard on the convertible, but General Motors, in its cost-cutting wisdom, has decided that in this year of 2005, if the government still does not require it, then its Corvette customers are still not worthy of head protection.

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Quote:
    MAVERICK said:
    Quote:
    VKSF said:
    Intuitively, I'd bet against safety systems engineering of any American/Italian car,



    Since Audi bought Lamborghini, the Gallardo is the first and only Italian exotic sports-car with head/thorax airbags.

    The C5 had no side airbags. The C6 has side thorax airbags optional on the coupe ( ) and standard on the convertible, but General Motors, in its cost-cutting wisdom, has decided that in this year of 2005, if the government still does not require it, then its Corvette customers are still not worthy of head protection.



    Logically, one would think well-designed side and head airbags should cause material reductions in post-crash injury claims. Similarly, one would think that convertibles would have materially higher risk of head/spinal injuries than equivalent coupes, but IIHS data for 911 coupe vs converts doesn't show material differences. Perhaps in last 5 yrs we've reached saturation point on safety advances and corresponding reductions in injury rates of fundamentally well-engineered cars like 911....such that, for ex., 997's more advanced side/head air bag system may not show material reduction in injury rates vs 996's....

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Quote:
    VKSF said:
    Intuitively, I'd bet against safety systems engineering of any American/Italian car, but IIHS crash injury claims data for '01-'03 cars shows 911, Corvette and SL to be among safest cars on planet in terms of low rate of post-crash injury claims.



    I have been led to believe that statistics can be manipulated in favor of or against an argument. So, with this statement in mind let's try and make sense of the IIHS data.

    VKSF, this is the data page you are referring to, correct?
    http://www.hwysafety.org/vehicle%5Fratings/ictl/ictl_sport.htm

    If so, there is a sentence in this report guide,

    http://www.hwysafety.org/vehicle%5Fratings/ictl/ictl.htm ,

    that says,
    Quote:
    Some vehicles (e.g., sports cars) can have low injury claim frequencies but a high relative rate of severe or fatal injuries because of the manner in which they're driven.



    Does this mean dead sports-car drivers don't usually file injury claims? Does it mean, as you said, that sports car drivers are usually uninsured? Does it mean drivers of higher priced sports-cars like the Corvette, SL, and 911 don't usually bother to file injury claims unlike Mustang, Eclipse and MR2 drivers?

    Also, why does the Saab 9-3 convertible, with its side thorax airbags and active headrests, have a significantly higher injury rate than the Corvette even though they both share the pink/average collision category rate?

    Last, it seems that the low (Mustang), medium (Saab 9-3), and high (Vette, SL, 911) priced sports-cars have an inverse relationship to the injury level categories. Why?

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Quote:
    VKSF said:
    Logically, one would think well-designed side and head airbags should cause material reductions in post-crash injury claims. Similarly, one would think that convertibles would have materially higher risk of head/spinal injuries than equivalent coupes, but IIHS data for 911 coupe vs converts doesn't show material differences. Perhaps in last 5 yrs we've reached saturation point on safety advances and corresponding reductions in injury rates of fundamentally well-engineered cars like 911....such that, for ex., 997's more advanced side/head air bag system may not show material reduction in injury rates vs 996's....



    The 996 coupes and convertibles have almost the same safety features, which may explain the lack of a significant difference. With respect to side impact safety, I don't know if the 997, with the revised side airbags, will be significantly safer than the 996. I like to believe the revision will make a difference. In a 30 mph, 3,300 lb. side impact crash, I believe, based on IIHS testing of a sedan with versus without side airbag protection, a 993 driver would be dead and a 996 driver hopefully alive (since a Porsche has not been independently tested and the results made public), a 997 driver hopefully alive, and a C6 convertible driver dead due to head injury and a C6 coupe driver dead due to head and thorax injuries.

    Also look at this 1996-98 data for the 993,
    http://www.hwysafety.org/vehicle%5Fratings/ictl/previous/ictl_0999.pdf ,

    versus the 2001-03 data,
    http://www.hwysafety.org/vehicle%5Fratings/ictl/ictl_sport.htm ,
    for the 996.

    Both, 993 and 996, are in the same "substantially better than average" category. Is this result due to restraint system advances not being able to overcome the insignificant shape and size differences between the two versions? Or is it due to the lesser frequency of side impact crashes versus frontal crash injuries being the same in 1996-98 and in 2001-03?

    Due to the 911's evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes, saturation seems to be reached when comparing two adjacent versions/generations such as the 996 versus 997. If you compare, say a 964 to a 997 or the 997 to three generations ahead of it in the future, consider the potential for advances in safety and the reduction of injury rates. For a 40 mph frontal offset and a 30 mph side perpendicular crash, saturation may have been reached, as you said. Unfortunately, sports cars like these can accelerate to 120 mph in a matter of seconds and at that speed, crash safety advances would need another 50-100 years to develop. And in that 50-100 years, sports cars will be able to gallop to 120 mph in at least half the time so crash safety is always playing a game of catch-up.

    Maybe we can look forward to a future of advanced systems that can sense, much like today's in-car GPS systems, someone about to run a stop sign or a red light, or an oncoming driver with a pattern of poor lane control which would warn us before a collision and if we don't react in time, our car and the oncoming car switch to auto mode and avoid each other making crash safety less important.

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Simply put, the folks at Car and Driver need to RTFM. They're so desperate to find anything to hate about the Corvette, that they started picking apart it's electronic gadgetry.

    Hint to Car and Driver: Electronic gadgetry is the future. Get used to it.

    Anyway...

    Quote:
    Raz (NC) said:
    1) "The trunk won't open until the car is shut off"




    This is wrong. The trunk release will work as long as the parking brake is engaged, regardless of whether the car is running or not.

    Quote:

    2) "the nav system refuses programming while the car is rolling, even at crawl speeds when you're desperately searching for an alternate route around an L.A. freeway logjam."



    Just tell the nav system, "Detour" with your voice, and it'll find one (or two, or ...)

    Quote:

    3) And most onerous of all, the push-button doors won't release until the shifter is in reverse. Pull the emergency door release on the floor to exit without a lawyer's permission.



    Once again, they're wrong. The doors will open, but the car will bitch at you about not being in reverse (manual tranny.)

    jas

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Carlos, I know you didn't write this (I've read your stuff on other sites and expect better of you,) but I'm going to respond to it as if you did. Take no offense, please.

    Quote:
    Carlos from Spain said:
    The compromise is that the suspension should be coil springs over gas charged shocks or struts like a 997.



    I LOVE it when critics of the Corvette bring up the transverse leaf springs, and insist the car MUST have coil-overs. I'll ask you the same question I ask them: Why? Do you truly understand suspension dynamics enough to say, for sure, that the Corvette would be better suited with a coil-over design? And if so, why would it? What's better about it?

    Here's one advantage a coil-over setup offers that a transverse leaf doesn't: independently adjustable corners. you can change the spring rate of the front left corner without affecting that of the front right, for instance. That's it for advantages. With that in mind, how important to the vast majority of sports car buyers is independently adjustable corners? Answer: not very. At all.

    Transverse leafs are lighter, stronger, and will last indefinitely. Also, GM chose the transverse leafs so they could change the angle of the shock, thereby lowering the height of the shock tower, thereby allowing more under-hood (ie, bigger engine!) and trunk room. (I have GM's SAE-published paper on the subject.)

    Quote:

    Brakes. Here I'm hoping that GM improved on the C5 but...



    I'll never disagree with you here. Corvettes brakes have been pathetic, and continue to be pathetic, until the new Z06 is available. There's absolutely NO excuse for 2-piston floating calipers clamping a rotor that warps within 5 laps around a track. GM continues to use them because A)they're cheap, and B)they're lightweight.

    Porsche does brakes goooood!

    Quote:
    Next is safety. Go to the Corvette website and search around for the safety efforts.... You'll be there along time because there isn't ANY!



    This next paragraph is ramblings of an idi0t, plain and simple. The Corvette (C5 and C6) has a door frame that's plenty strong enough to pass any of the gov't (ever increasingly) strict side-impact laws. It's not empty, as the auther tries to make us believe. If you want to try and pass a bat through the door, feel free. You're not going to make it very far.

    I realize this is a Porsche site, and most of you folks are Porsche fans. Be that as it may, I'd hope that your discussions of other cars would be based on fact and factual opinions, not this rubbish.

    jas

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Jason, I was just refereing to the safety part of the quoted post but I have to say I agree with him in that if leaf springs were so appropriate for a modern day sportcar, others would use it, and Corvette themselves would not toss it in their vette race cars. I believe its a compromise but I also believe that its not a hugely terrible one on handling since we know that the Z06 can handle at the track. The poster himself BTW is an ex-C5 owner and has hands on knowledge as he quotes "I did my own work on every system in the C5".

    As to the safety aspect that he was mentioning the doors example, he was refereing to this, as you can see from the pic a high bumper of a 2 ton SUV would have a feast with the passengers with that if the door is a plastic door without steel body panels reinforced with impact metal beams, and topping of with side airbags.

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Quote:
    Carlos from Spain said:
    Jason, I was just refereing to the safety part of the quoted post but I have to say I agree with him in that if leaf springs were so appropriate for a modern day sportcar, others would use it, and Corvette themselves would not toss it in their vette race cars.



    They use them in the race cars for the adjustability, and nothing more. There is no handling advantage (other than said adjustability) enjoyed by coil-overs.

    Quote:

    As to the safety aspect that he was mentioning the doors example, he was refereing to this, as you can see from the pic a high bumper of a 2 ton SUV would have a feast with the passengers with that if the door is a plastic door without steel body panels reinforced with impact metal beams, and topping of with side airbags.



    I'm pretty sure the doors are reinforced with metal beams. In fact, I think they're required to be. The picture you pulled from Motor Trend is the chassis, roof, and pillars. Doors not included there.

    jas

    Re: "Saftey" limitations on the new Vette

    Quote:
    MAVERICK said:
    Quote:
    VKSF said:
    Logically, one would think well-designed side and head airbags should cause material reductions in post-crash injury claims. Similarly, one would think that convertibles would have materially higher risk of head/spinal injuries than equivalent coupes, but IIHS data for 911 coupe vs converts doesn't show material differences. Perhaps in last 5 yrs we've reached saturation point on safety advances and corresponding reductions in injury rates of fundamentally well-engineered cars like 911....such that, for ex., 997's more advanced side/head air bag system may not show material reduction in injury rates vs 996's....



    The 996 coupes and convertibles have almost the same safety features, which may explain the lack of a significant difference. With respect to side impact safety, I don't know if the 997, with the revised side airbags, will be significantly safer than the 996. I like to believe the revision will make a difference. In a 30 mph, 3,300 lb. side impact crash, I believe, based on IIHS testing of a sedan with versus without side airbag protection, a 993 driver would be dead and a 996 driver hopefully alive (since a Porsche has not been independently tested and the results made public), a 997 driver hopefully alive, and a C6 convertible driver dead due to head injury and a C6 coupe driver dead due to head and thorax injuries.

    Also look at this 1996-98 data for the 993,
    http://www.hwysafety.org/vehicle%5Fratings/ictl/previous/ictl_0999.pdf ,

    versus the 2001-03 data,
    http://www.hwysafety.org/vehicle%5Fratings/ictl/ictl_sport.htm ,
    for the 996.

    Both, 993 and 996, are in the same "substantially better than average" category. Is this result due to restraint system advances not being able to overcome the insignificant shape and size differences between the two versions? Or is it due to the lesser frequency of side impact crashes versus frontal crash injuries being the same in 1996-98 and in 2001-03?

    Due to the 911's evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes, saturation seems to be reached when comparing two adjacent versions/generations such as the 996 versus 997. If you compare, say a 964 to a 997 or the 997 to three generations ahead of it in the future, consider the potential for advances in safety and the reduction of injury rates. For a 40 mph frontal offset and a 30 mph side perpendicular crash, saturation may have been reached, as you said. Unfortunately, sports cars like these can accelerate to 120 mph in a matter of seconds and at that speed, crash safety advances would need another 50-100 years to develop. And in that 50-100 years, sports cars will be able to gallop to 120 mph in at least half the time so crash safety is always playing a game of catch-up.

    Maybe we can look forward to a future of advanced systems that can sense, much like today's in-car GPS systems, someone about to run a stop sign or a red light, or an oncoming driver with a pattern of poor lane control which would warn us before a collision and if we don't react in time, our car and the oncoming car switch to auto mode and avoid each other making crash safety less important.



    Excellent points, Maverick. I'm most surprised by lack of difference in injury claims btwn 996Coupe vs Cab....esp given Coupes provide a rigid steel roof structure as first layer of protection for head, whereas Cabs offer mere airspace as first layer of protection Perhaps are Cabs often more sedately driven vs Coupe population that includes possibly more aggressively driven GT3/2, etc...thereby erasing Coupe's structural advantages?

     
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