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New Car Must Have ExtrasRonald Porep, Republished from SafetyIssues.com Issue 31 |
Volume 4 Issue 43June 2005 |
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Are you shopping for a new car? Are you groaning over the prices but also salivating over the accessories your new car can have if you can afford them? Well, there are two accessories that you must have - the lives of you and your loved ones depend on these additions. One accessory you must have is anti lock brakes (ABS). |
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"Unfortunately on some of the lower-line models ABS is still optional and
many of the dealers actually don't stock vehicles with ABS brakes,
"The dealer says, 'Do you really need ABS? We've got one without. It
really doesn't do much," describes David Champion, Director of Auto
Testing at Consumer Reports, adding that ABS is one accessory that your
life can depend upon. Why? The theory behind anti-lock brakes is simple. A skidding wheel (where the tire contact patch is sliding relative to the road) has less traction than a non-skidding wheel. If you have been stuck on ice, you know that if your wheels are spinning you have no traction. This is because the contact patch is sliding relative to the ice. By keeping the wheels from skidding while you slow down, anti-lock brakes benefit you in two ways: You'll stop faster, and you'll be able to steer while you stop. But, you protest, you have lightening reflexes. On slippery surfaces, even professional drivers can't stop as quickly without ABS as an average driver can with ABS. ABS can save your life and the lives of the loved ones in the car with you. Another feature your new car must have is Electronic stability control (ESC). Here is how stability control works. Here is what happens when you do not have stability control. A patch of ice or an unexpected puddle causes your car to fishtail. Your heart jumps to your throat as you're fighting the wheel, trying to avert a potentially deadly spinout. You can not avert that tree. Your head smashes through the windshield. Your daughter is thrown out of the car. Your wife and son - who were not in the car with you - have to arrange funerals for you and your daughter. Here is what happens with stability control. Your car hits the ice but a dashboard light flickers and, before you even have time to react, you're back on course and in full control. The Electronic stability-control (ESC) system avoided the deadly spinout and crash, saving your life and the life of your precious daughter. But the car salesman protests that ESC is just a wasted added expense. The hard data proves that salesman dead wrong. Two studies from Europe and Japan -- where consumers have more widely embraced ESC -- confirm that stability control may be second only to seat belts in safeguarding drivers and passengers. Toyota found that electronic stability control reduced single-vehicle crashes in Japan by a remarkable 35% and head-on crashes by 30%. In the European study, Mercedes-Benz, whose lineup has sported ESC as a standard feature since 1999, reported a 29% drop in single-vehicle accidents; crashes of all types fell 15%. Those kinds of results could prevent as many as 6,000 of the nearly 43,000 crash-related deaths each year in the U.S. -- dramatically more than air bags, which have saved about 800 lives annually since 1987, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). If the car salesman still insists that ABS and ECS are a waste of your cash, tell him you are going to a car dealership where you can buy a car with both. These two extras - which are actually becoming standards on many higher priced car models - are actually car accessories you can not live without. |
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