Saab crash tests create an impact

Saab's safety team was more than pleased with the results of official crash tests carried out on its 9-5 and 9-3 models in Europe.

But the Swedish carmaker already knew the cars would perform well after carrying out the usual rigorous tests of its own.

Europe's New Car Assessment Programme, called EuroNCAP, rated the 9-5 the safest car it had ever tested.

Both the 9-3 and 9-5 were praised for their side impact protection. Further praise was given to the child seat restraints -the best that NCAP testers had ever seen - and the award-winning Head Restraint System, designed to reduce neck injuries.

Saab puts its new models through a number of crash tests - car-to-car, frontal, side and rear end - including crashes against a solid barrier, like a concrete wall, and a deformable barrier, which simulates the impact with another vehicle.

The cars are also crashed into a rigid vertical pole, both at the front and side, to simulate crashing into objects such as a tree.

Other tests recreate the effects of a crash with a truck and rollover crashes.

Saab says its in-house tests always go beyond the boundaries set down by regulatory bodies.

The NCAP frontal collision test is done at 64 km/h. Saab does it at 70 km/h. For the side-on collision test, Saab made the deformable barrier bigger and heavier than legal requirements.

Then there is the famous "moose" test. Colliding with a moose or elk is a big problem in Sweden and to assess the cars' performance, and to ensure the safety of occupants, Saab developed a synthetic moose which weighs 390kg.

"After the initial impact the moose crashes straight through the windscreen," said Per Lenhoff, manager of the crash testing plant.

"The car does not slow down but carries the moose along with it."

In this situation, the connection between the windscreen and its pillars is vital for protecting the front occupants from injury.

In the real world there is an infinite number of loading conditions for any car. In a test for the 9-5 estate, three adult dummies were put in the back seat along with 80kg of unsecured luggage in the rear. The car was crashed at 56 km/h. The luggage was propelled forward creating very high stress on the back of the rear seats. Most test cars are crashed twice, front and rear. "Up to 150 crashes can be carried out before a car goes into production," said Lenhoff.

Saab has an accident follow-up procedure so that information from real-life crashes can be fed back into the design and development process.

All rear-end impacts, for example, are reported to help Saab's on-going investigation into whip-lash injuries.

If a crash is considered worthy of further study, Saab puts together a suitable team. If it was a side-impact collision, an engineer working in that field will investigate. A frontal crash will get a front-end engineer.

The damaged car is not touched until the Saab team inspects it. Police reports and details of injuries are assembled.

A questionnaire, which includes a clause asking permission for medical records, is sent to the people involved in the accident. "Quite often, the team will visit the accident site to assess road conditions, obstacles and so on," said Lenhoff.

"We may have to find the object which caused the crash - a tree for example, or the other car involved.

"We often walk around scrapyards looking at wrecks in the search for the other vehicle."

Once the information is assembled, the team meets with a surgeon with experience in car injuries.

Computer animation is sometimes used to simulate the positions of vehicles before and after impact.

"In some extreme collisions we will also do a simulation to look at the deformation of the vehicle on impact," said Lenhoff.

The Saab team investigates about 100 accidents a year.