主题：【原创】想买Ford Explorer，几个问题请教大家 -- dafemren

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http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/leastsafe_1.html

Autos

Least-Safe Cars 2007

Forbes.com

By Dan Lienert

You're at the car dealership, excited to seal the deal on your nice new ride

. You're assessing your options, and several sound sexy: heated cup holders,

GPS navigation system, big alloy wheels.

One option that does not: side airbags.

But in a pinch, they could make a bigger difference than the navigation syst

em, shiny wheels and coffee-warmer combined. The Insurance Institute for Hig

hway Safety (IIHS) rattled the automotive world on Oct. 5 by announcing that

side airbags that protect people's heads are reducing driver deaths in cars

struck on the driver's side by an estimated 37%. So are side airbags the se

at belts of the 21st century?

Seat belts--also humble and un-sexy--were not required by law a few decades

ago, and wearing them was not commonplace. Today, side airbags aren't always

standard--and as the safety bar ratchets ever higher, cars without them are

lagging in safety ratings.

Go to Forbes.com to see seven of today's least-safe cars.

The airbag effect shows in our list of the least-safe new cars on the market

. In crash tests, a car with side airbags can be among the best performers;

take the bags away, and its ratings can fall dramatically.

Case in point: Toyota Motor's Corolla four-door. It's popular, reliable and

a good performer in crash tests--except for models without side airbags. The

n it comes with the lowest possible side-protection ratings from the IIHS, a

nd makes it onto our list.

Also on the roster: Chevrolet's Cobalt four-door, which does better with sid

e airbags, but without them gets some "poor" crash-test ratings; Ford Motor'

s Focus four-door and Mazda's Mazda3 four-door, for which there are no IIHS

crash-test ratings with side airbags; Saturn's Ion four-door, which has poor

ratings with or without optional side airbags; and Suzuki Motor's Aerio and

Forenza four-doors, which have standard airbags but still get poor side cra

sh-test scores.

Many--if not most--new cars come a host of safety features: anti-lock brakes

, which can preserve steering control and reduce stopping distances; tractio

n- and stability-control systems, which increase control and stability on sl

ippery surfaces; and daytime running lights, which help you see better and m

ake you more visible to other drivers. Automakers insert higher-strength ste

el into collision-prone sections. They design seats, head restraints and bum

pers to shield occupants in crashes.

From 1982 until 2005, U.S. driver death rates per million passenger vehicles

registered decreased 51%, according to the IIHS, an independent, nonprofit

organization dedicated to reducing the losses (deaths, injuries and property

damage) from crashes in the U.S. But most of that drop came from frontal cr

ashes, in which driver death rates decreased 53%, due to such factors as fro

ntal airbags, higher seatbelt use and more crash-worthy vehicles.

In contrast, driver death rates in side crashes decreased 42% during that ti

me. And each year, 43,000 Americans still die in auto accidents..

To compile our roster, we looked at three main factors: a car's accident-avo

idance features; results of crash tests, which are conducted in controlled e

nvironments; and real-world data, in the rates of injury claims filed per ve

hicle. (See details of our methodology here.)

We were surprised that the list consisted entirely of small passenger cars,

such as Ford Motor's Focus, and the Saturn Ion. We expected to see at least

one SUV on the roster. But a section on the Highway Loss Data Institute's (H

LDI) Web site explains why the list looks the way it does: small two- and fo

ur-door cars typically have higher death rates and higher-than-average insur

ance injury claims.

Automakers whose cars made the list took issue with it. The main complaints

involved the IIHS' testing procedures, the meaning of a worse-than-average r

ate of injury-claim filings and the fairness of singling out cars with one o

r more bad scores despite multiple good scores in other areas.

"You cannot draw these kinds of conclusions" from the data, a Ford spokesman

said of the Focus.

A Toyota Motor spokesman said that the Corolla four-door has several good cr

ash-test ratings, despite a couple of "poor" IIHS ratings for certain models

. The spokesman also pointed out that the car's injury-claim rate is better

than those of several of its competitors. Ford Motor argued against our incl

usion of its Focus for the same reasons.