What Your Car Goes Through to Ensure Your Safety
December 17, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Car manufacturers go through a lot to test the cars you drive, putting them through millions of miles in extreme conditions. Here is a closer look at just what happens.
Auto manufacturers put their cars through trials of strength and endurance that only an Eskimo or a Bedouin could hope to recreate. That’s why you’ll see pre-production Bugatti Veyrons doing rooster tails in Sweden, Bentleys running through entire tanks of gas at 185 mph in South Africa, and Aston Martins emerging from a dust storm in Kuwait.
The theory is that if the car survives thirty straight days of icy, 3-dog-nights in the Arctic, it will shrug off at least decade of New England winters. Or, for that matter, Minnesota winters. Jason Widmer, a principal engineer for Acura, tells of putting a car through Midewestern tortures.
“In 1996 when we were cold testing in International Falls, Minnesota,” Widmer said. “The annual Icebox Days festival was, in fact, cancelled due to the extreme cold! During that same stretch, Tower, MN recorded -60 deg F, the coldest air temperature ever recorded in the state, and in the midst of it all there we were testing our products.”
These extreme conditions may provide bumps and bruises for the engineers testing the cars, but it means that the customer will have the safest ride possible.
Nevertheless, in spite of all of this testing, the recall rolls of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration attest to the fact that car engineers simply can’t test for everything: the Arctic doesn’t have salt trucks, Australia doesn’t have that magic combination of ruts in your driveway that highlights a suspension’s single weak point, and Namibia doesn’t have that hill outside your house that’s at just the right angle to keep fuel from getting to the pump when the tank is three-sixteenths full.
So while there are national regulations for vehicle safety, emissions, and even lighting, there are no federal standards for automobile capabilities in extreme conditions. Still, carmakers continue to test their vehicles in these conditions because out there someone may actually need a vehicle that can put up with all the extreme elements.
[Source: AOL News]
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