Car Safety

Politics is at best a messy and adversarial process. Add in a presidential election and the currently polarized political mood, and anything at all done by government is usually exploited for political gain--by one side or another, often by both from different stances. Which seems a good lens to...

Car safety has improved in leaps and bounds over the last few decades, with several technological advancements helping not only to protect you in an accident, but also prevent them in the first place. Even so, statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), Highway Loss Data...

You either like the 2013 Smart ForTwo minicar, or you don't. Few are ambivalent to a shape and a concept so divisive as the Smart, but U.S. sales would suggest that rather more people dislike it than appreciate its cheeky nature. One popular misconception about the ForTwo from those rather less...

Four new 2013 vehicles have picked up 'good' ratings in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's (IIHS) crash tests. The Acura ILX, a small luxury car, the new Ford Escape crossover, and the Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S sports car twins have all been awarded the IIHS top award for good performance...

Well, that was quick. On Saturday, just eight days after a fire badly damaged a 2012 Fisker Karma, the company has completed its forensic investigation, announced the cause, and started a recall for the part in question. Fisker concluded that the fire was caused by an internal fault in a sealed...

Given the hurricane of bad publicity for the Chevrolet Volt last year over a battery-pack fire (in a crash-testing vehicle, a week after it was wrecked), any fire at all in a plug-in car is one too many. So the occurrence of a second fire among only 1,000 Fisker Karma range-extended electric luxury...

BMW is recalling its ActiveE electric cars to replace a potentially faulty component whose failure could leave drivers without power steering. According to the text of the recall, "variations in electrical current" may occur within the electric power steering, leading to a sudden loss of the power...

General Motors is recalling 413,418 Chevrolet Cruzes in the U.S. to modify the engine shield under the vehicle. The recall, which affects 2011 and 2012 model year vehicles, is designed to fix the engine shield to prevent liquids becoming trapped in it, creating a fire risk. GM will also fix some...

Ever since a battery pack from a 2012 Chevrolet Volt caught fire weeks after it was subjected to tough National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tests in a laboratory, critics of General Motor’s plug-in hybrid have been quick to question its safety credentials. But after a Toyota Camry...

Over the weekend we heard the disturbing news that a BYD e6 electric taxi in Shenzhen China had burst into flames and killed three of its occupants after being hit by a speeding drunk driver. According to eyewitness reports, the BYD e6 taxi, one of around 400 e6 electric taxis being used in the...

Round, black, and easily forgettable--that's your average car tire. Often, we don't think about them until we need to change them, whether the tread is wearing low or we get a puncture. However, it's well worth considering them more often, as not only are they vital to your safety, but tires also...

These days, unless you’re an ardent fan of hybrid or electric cars, it can be pretty hard to tell them apart from their gasoline equivalents. For the average motorist it isn’t an issue, but for first responders attending the scene of an accident, it’s important to know what a...

Well, it's all over but the shouting now. This afternoon, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a statement saying it had closed its investigation into the causes of a fire in the battery pack of a Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car. The statement said the agency had...

A new report from a National Academy of Sciences panel has said that the NHTSA was justified in closing a probe into Toyota's 2009 and 2010 unintended acceleration cases. More than 8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles, including models like the Toyota Prius hybrid, were recalled worldwide to fix...

A bug in supplied software has prompted Fisker to issue a second recall for Karma models, and owners will get a personal apology from Henrik Fisker himself.

GM announced today that it would offer a "customer satisfaction" initiative that provides modifications to roughly 12,400 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric cars to reduce the chance that the battery pack could catch fire days or weeks after a severe accident. The safety "enhancement" is meant...

When we wrote last year about the 2011 Nissan Leaf being waterboarded for your safety, little did we know an even sterner test was about to challenge the safety of Nissan's electric car. The devastating and tragic results of the March tsunami shook Japan to the core, and resulted in the country's...

It's been a tough few weeks of publicity for the Chevrolet Volt, the extended-range electric car that's the green halo vehicle at General Motors. Now, despite sales below GM's announced target and an NHTSA inquiry into fires in the lithium-ion battery pack several weeks after they were involved in...

Phew. Yesterday was quite a day indeed in Chevy Volt land. A bevy of news items hit the wires, following Monday's offer of loaner cars to Volt owners who weren't comfortable with their cars' safety until the NHTSA finishes its investigation into battery-pack fires in cars that had been wrecked in...

While a handful of Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric cars have been destroyed in fires, potential Volt buyers are not deterred by sensationalist media reports around the blazes, says trade journal Automotive News.