Craig Baltzer wrote:
> Luv these "they should have crashed thousands and then averaged the
> results like "real science"" comments. They took a vehicle, crashed it
> under controlled conditions, and came up with the "poor" rating. There
> was a Dak that rolled off the line and when crashed faired poorly. Who
> cares if the next 2 did well, and then the 3rd did poorly again? Point
> is Dodge is making trucks that fare poorly in these tests, and there is
> no "SURVIVE" option code to make sure you don't get one exactly like the
> one that failed. For the "scientific" guys, this is the negative proof
> of the asertion that "Dakotas are very safe trucks in crash tests"; you
> don't need to crash any more trucks once you've found one that is
> unsafe.
Why is it that you can so easily see the negative side, but can't recognize
the positive? Sure, if you get a "bad" Dakota you can expect problems.
That's an inherent risk with buying any vehicle. If you buy a "good" Dakota
though, you can expect to have fewer problems (and there's no reliable way
I'm aware of to figure that out ahead of time). You can understand that as
well--no?
As far as the lack of repetition in the 40mph off-set crash test; it IS a
scientific draw-back, whether you'd rather see it as a black and white issue
or not. Perhaps there is a problem with Dakotas and head injuries at 40mph
off-set collisions--probably so, according to the indications of the test.
But one test of a randomly selected vehicle is shoddy science. Sure, the
TEST conditions are controlled, but suppose the Dakota used for the test had
a few critical welds that weren't properly done? and what if it had a few
critical welds that were OVERdone for some reason, and therefore stronger
than average? The results of a single trial aren't very reliable. We may
have a smaller problem in a collision than the test indicates, we may have a
larger one, or the test may have been nominal. Unless more Dakotas are
tested we simply won't know.
Yes, it IS important to do such things scientifically in order to acquire
reliable results.
Skeptic X
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:08:55 EDT