WASP 2008 - Hits and misses

Wheels Magazine
March, 2008

How safe are the cars Australia drives? Car-safety comparisons are generally framed around crash-test results. But these are distilled for public consumption to the point that they are almost meaningless. Is a low five-star car really safer than one in the high fours?

It's just not that simple.

Obviously, it's better not to crash. The 'six-star' performance, if you like, is to miss. However comforting it is to be surrounded by eight airbags and five pyrotechnic seatbelt pre-tensioners, it's unthinkable to be involved in the aftermath of their deployment. Missing - if only by the thickness of a cigarette paper - is maybe not the optimal result in traffic, but it's a good one nonetheless.

The Wheels Active Safety Program (WASP) is, literally, the 'missing' link of safety ratings. The ability to miss is all we measure. Some cars miss in situations where others have already hit, big time, and we're going to reveal which ones are which.

No other reference exists to inform consumers about the relative 'active safety' (crash-avoidance capability) of Australia's most popular cars. WASP is a vital Australian public safety issue, as there are 22,000 serious injuries and 1600 deaths stemming from some 200,000 reported crashes annually. Cost, not including human suffering - $17 billion That's 70 percent higher than the officially estimated impost of organised crime on our society. More than one in 10 reported crashes injures someone seriously; the chance of dying in a crash is almost one percent. Both probabilities are way too high to play Russian roulette with.

Crash mitigation - 'passive safety'; making crashes marginally more survivable - still hogs the limelight. It's also a vital, if somewhat overstated, road-safety element. Entire advertising campaigns (Subaru's, for example) centre around five-star crashworthiness. Crash-mitigating hardware is itself a selling tool. You couldn't squeeze yourself into an elevator packed with all the acronyms contrived to convince car buyers they are just one signature away from the safest vehicle on the road. (Toyota's Corolla, for example, boasts GOA, MICS and WIL - Global Outstanding Assessment, Minimal Intrusion Cabin System and Whiplash Injury Lessening, plus a Safe-T-Cell.)

Crashes are reported, analysed statistically, broken down by severity and type, and the results are published in numerous reports. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has a public-domain online Fatal Road Crash Database, and the NSW RTA publishes an annual statistical statement called, somewhat unimaginatively, Road Traffic Crashes in NSW. These are enough to cure insomnia. Yet almost no analysis is done on crashes that are avoided, and why/how. There isn't even a reporting system for that.

Until now.

FIVE THINGS TO SORT WHAT'S WASP

• The cars Australia drives were selected by outright sales reported by industry statistician, Vfacts, for year-to-date at October 2007. Car companies were asked to supply the most popular variant of each of the top-selling models. We got all of the market's top 10, plus Focus, Astra, RAV4 and Territory. Unfortunately, Ford was unable to supply us with its most popular Falcon model, the XT, instead giving us an atmo XR6 (its second best seller). So we shifted the XR6 sideways into the role of benchmark car, to provide the barometer against which all the rest might be judged. That left us with 13 contenders.
  
  
• Last time we did a full-blown WASP on Australia's most popular cars was in July 2005 (we WASPed SUVs in January 2007). A lot has changed in the market since then, including: new Commodore, Lancer, Aurion, Camry, Focus, Corolla, Civic and RAV4. We also removed the light commercials (Holden Rodeo and Toyota HiAce were entertaining, but irrelevant) to bolster the relevance to car buyers.
  
  
• WASP results are based purely on the numbers because, in those critical few moments you get to deal with an on-road emergency, what a car can do is significantly more imortant than how it feels. All the test results are based on objective measurements.
  
  
• Oran Park's skid pan is a perfect venue for WASP testing because it has a straight that allows highway-speed brake testing, and 100+km/h lane changes, as well as on-limit manoeuvres at real-world urban speeds. WASP is about real-world relevance.
  
  
• Wet testing has been ditched for WASP 2008. Why? Two reasons. First, water tends not really to tell us anything new. In reviewing both our two previous WASPs and the faster, harder, but similar Handling Olympics, it's apparent that water degrades grip uniformly, but the relative performances of the vehicles don't change much. Front-runners, back-markers and mid-fielders in the dry slalom, for example, tend to be the same front-runners, back-markers and mid-fielders when you open the taps. And, second, wet tracks are very hard to keep uniformly and consistently wet. Minor variations in results - second in the dry changing to third in the wet, for example - might be influenced significantly by our inability to keep conditions precisely constant. So we ditched wet circles and slaloms and added two more relevant crash-avoidance tests in their place.

WASP 2008 SCORING: The Fine Print.
Tests 1-4 - the 'big four', dynamically - were each scored out of 20. The hot lap test rated just five points, and overtaking potential was scored out of 10. Reversing vision completed the total of 100 with a maximum score of five points.

The winner in each test gets the maximum points on offer, and the rest of the vehicles are allocated points proportionately, based on their proximities to the winning performance. Each vehicle's final score is expressed as a percentage.

For the benefit of readers interested in dynamic performances only, we've included score and ranking details for tests 1-6 only. The rationale behind the entire scoring scheme is presented in the wrap-up.

TEST 1 - BRAKING: 20 POINTS

Here, we eliminated the driver-related variables (reaction time, speed of pedal application...) and concentrated just on stopping capacity. Brakes were applied at 110-115km/h, and Vbox started recording from 100km/h. All the driver variation happened 'upstream' of the test, and speedo error was effectively sidelined.

By 100km/h, the ABS - all vehicles had it - was in full activation, and the stop was merely a matter of hardware and grip versus physics, logged direct to laptop. The same track section was used throughout. Two runs within a tolerance of half a metre were required, and testing kept happening until we got them, which we then averaged.

Test 2 - G-MAX: 20 POINTS

This test showcases maximum grip in cornering at the default urban speed limit (50km/h). The circle is contrived to deliver 1.0 lateral G at just over 50km/h. We made a few assumptions - since you can't force a vehicle onto a precise circle 44 metres in diameter. So we marked with cones an inner circle 40 metres in diameter and an outer circle of 48 metres. That left a lane four metres wide, which is the vehicle width plus about one metre on either side - pretty tight. The timing beam measured each lap, and we kept Boz peddling until we had good consistency, then selected the best lap. That time came straight off the electronics, and the G-loads recorded were calculated later, based on our assumed 22-metre radius.

Test 3 - Slalom: 20 POINTS

It's no good if you swerve and avoid (a pedestrian, a red light crasher, etc...) then lose control and snot a power pole. The slalom gets a chassis upset, and keeps it that way until it loses the plot. The car never gets to settle because it's always changing direction. Power, brakes and outright cornering ability don't contribute; only direction-changing ability counts. Nine cones at 14-metres takes under 10 seconds, but tells you rather a lot about real-world composure. Slaloms are self-limiting events. Overcook it and the result magnifies itself through each subsequent cone, either slowing you down or blowing it completely... albeit without the horrific real-world consequences.

Test 4 Lane change: 20 POINTS

Skippy hops out. You swerve then - hopefully - avoid and recover control. This test defines the limit of a car's ability to do the 'horror' swerve and keep within a defined, constant travel path, at highway speeds. The faster you can do it, the more margin of safety you have at a lower speed. We based this exercise, which stretches over 110 metres on the ISO standard test, but didn't comply with the finer detail (measuring wind speed, etc.) We started at 80km/h, and incrementally increased entry speed until the vehicle just couldn't complete the manoeuvre without hitting a cone. Entry speed was measured by radar gun to the nearest 1km/h.

Test 5 - Hot lap: 5 POINTS

Flying laps of our improvised circuit combine acceleration, brakes and both breeds of cornering - steady-state and transient. Each lap takes around 30 seconds, and comprises a six-cone slalom, a hairpin, a dip (wet, as it happens) and a 180-degree sweeper. Maximum speed was a real-world relevant 100km/h. Not only does this test combine everything tested individually so far, it does so at speeds that don't kill the cars. It also gives some indication about which is the most capable and rewarding performance driving proposition. From two mutually consistent laps we selected the best one - and if there were gross variations we backed Boz up and he went at it again, until there weren't.

Test 6 - Overtaking: 10 POINTS

Fastest in-gear acceleration from 60-100km/h is a good barometer of overtaking potential. The quicker you can get there, the less time (and distance) spent on the wrong side of the road, in potential head-on collision territory. It's certainly a dynamic safety issue, though not one as important as, say, braking potential - because the brakes in a 1500kg car decelerating at 1.0G generate a massive 400kW of power, and nearly every 1500kg car on the market can do that. Brakes are for when overtaking goes seriously, horribly wrong. Overtaking potential is what you need to minimise risk when it doesn't. Here, Vbox measured both time and distance required to do it.

Test 7 Reversing vision: 5 POINTS

Huh? A crash-avoidance capability test done with the vehicle stopped? This test measures the minimum distance straight back from the centre of the rear bumper that a driver can see the top of a two-year-old child's head. Reversing crashes make up 12 percent of child pedestrian injuries, and account for eight percent of all child motor vehicle deaths, according to the medical journal of Australia. They're the most common form of traumatic death in children outside the backyard swimming pool. With that in mind, we took a core-flute cutout of an average-height two-year-old (87cm) and measured the point at which rear vision was occluded for an average-height driver in a constant seating position.

THE TESTER
John 'Boz' Boston is demonstrably not human. If he were, there would be some lack of precision, some inconsistency in the numbers his test runs deliver. He has that ability, however, to get into any car and drive it on the limit, right out of the blocks, and make every run the same. Our data here are valid in no small part thanks to his on-limit skill.

Boz is actually a very experienced race driver, something he kicked off at age 13 when he borrowed his Auntie's Corolla to compete in a motorkhana. Since then he's won a swag of state and national trophies. He also works as a driving instructor for Ian Luff Motivation Australia.

Boz's subjective assessment of each car is included for balance, but doesn't contribute to the score. Feel is important, but only 'real' counts when an emergency plays out in front of you.

THE FIELD

Read more on the Wheels Active Safety Program here:

WASP 2008 Results: Where the cars ranked and why ...

WASP 2008 Results: The Wash-up ...

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