Smart Car: Driver killed after her micro-sized vehicle hits a… motorcycle

Smart Car: Driver killed after her micro-sized vehicle hits a… motorcycle. We heartily suggest Obama immediately sign an executive order giving Smart cars to all members of the Sierra Club, the Department of Interior, Greenpeace, and the EPA. Jerry Brown needs one, too.

CO2Insanity: Tired of the CO2 BS and all the other BS in the US and the world.

View Comments (44)

  • These cars never struck me as "smart" in any way. First of all, if your goal is good gas mileage, these little things are only rated at 34-38 mpg. I'm getting better than that with my Chevy Cruze Eco. Mostly, though, they're just not safe - as this picture indicates. Someone down the street from me has one. He says he bought it for just driving around town. He says he won't take it out on major highways because it gets blown around "like a little toy" around big trucks or in any kind of wind. I hope he never gets in an accident anywhere, because this car is just an over-sized tin can compared to every other vehicle on the road... including motorcycles, it appears!

    • I think the original astronauts used the term SPAM IN A CAN. Applies her at least as much as to a space capsule.

  • And I thought riding a motorcycle was dangerous. All the fake plastic roll cages and crumple zones in the world won't save you from the truck that runs your butt over because your car's too underpowered to get out of the way.

  • When they first came out with these I remember some twink from Mercedes on the TV spouting off about how safe these are, that they have a roll cage, blah blah blah. I then found a video online where they took a Smart and a 20 year old Ford Cortina (was done in the UK), and crashed them into concrete barriers at something like 35-40 MPH.

    Based upon the appearance of the crash dummies, if you would have been in the Smart you would have lost both legs at the knees. If you had been in the old Cortina, with no airbags and no cage, you probably would have walked away.

    That was all I needed to tell me I'll never buy a Smart.

  • I have owned guns since my grandfather decided I was old enough to have one and now liberals want to take them away because one of them may jump up and kill someone all by itself.

    I have been riding motorcycles since I was a teenager and now I suspect some liberal butthead may want to ban bikes because they kill people all by themselves. If their idea of an eco-friendly vehicle for the masses is threatened by something as insignificant as a two-wheeled motorcycle then the bike must go! A Harley is dangerous to our little shitbox on little rubber tires and we cannot have that!

    As bad as the highways are in this state I could hit one of these shoeboxes with my F-250 and wouldn't even think about it. Just another bump in the road.

    • I know what you mean whiskey, I recently bought an F-250, and can't believe the difference between it and my old F-150.
      As far as hitting one of those little shitboxes, I saved this story from my discussion about dumb cars with she who shall not be named.

      http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/Smart_ForTwo/

      Here's the highlights!

      The Fortwo also comes with safety concerns. The 2010 model received good ratings from the insurance industry, but it only gets such high ratings because crash tests were done with cars of comparable size. If the Fortwo hit a larger car, the outcome would not be pleasant.

      “After striking the front of the [Mercedes Benz] C class,
      the Smart went airborne and turned around 450 degrees,” the Insurance Industry for Highway Safety says in a press release on their new crash tests.
      “This contributed to excessive movement of the dummy during rebound — a dramatic indication of the Smart's poor performance but not the only one. There was extensive intrusion into the space around the dummy from head to feet. The instrument panel moved up and toward the dummy. The steering wheel was displaced upward. Multiple measures of injury likelihood, including those on the dummy's head, were poor, as were measures on both legs.”

      • It looks like riding my bike is safer than driving on of these things. At least I can lay it over and bail off, if need be, instead of being trapped inside with nowhere to go.

  • I'm not gonna dance on someone's grave over this, because I drive a smaller car. But I also live in a city where I can get anywhere I need to be in 15 minutes or less. I only have to fill my gas tank once a month and put about 7000 miles a year on my car. (Long trips we take my partners SUV or I rent a bigger car). The sad thing about this is people buy these micro cars usually to save some money or because they genuinely want to use less fuel or some other well intentioned reason and then get hurt or killed because the laws of physics don't care about altruism. I mean, at least with my little sports coupe, I would survive a crash with a motorcycle. These micro cars are unsafe and the tree hugger lobby has blood on their hands convincing folks otherwise.

  • Chill. Driving a tiny unsafe car, for whatever reason, is similar to deciding to take up smoking or eating the "good" stuff instead of healthy crap all the time or keeping guns in a house with children. It involves a calculated risk and that is what freedom is all about. It's up to the individual to decide which risks to take in their lives.

    Maybe some of them are smug about it. So what? I would also point out that smart car drivers are lowering gas prices for everybody else. They are also making the streets safer for people with normal sized cars because if they hit your car it's likely they'll be the ones getting banged up.

    • You are definitely a glass-half-full kind of guy, aren't you? I like that!

      But, I do think that it's ridiculous that the government allows these incredibly unsafe cars to be sold and used as regular cars. They should be confined to city use only, or have maximum speeds of say 40 MPH. They are basically covered scooters and should probably be treated like that.

  • Cold, y'all.. Poor lady.

    One of my buddies in high school was layed out by a motorcycle, on a residential street.. Weeks in hospital, pins in bones, internal injuries, months of physical therapy and years of nagging pain. He easily could've died. He was on a bicycle. Not sure that matters much.

    Wouldn't wish that on anyone decent

    • I'm not that mean spirited, but this was a 78 year old woman who bought a car about the size of a golf cart. Safety is an issue when I buy a car, & something the size of a golf cart on streets & highways is not safe. The guy on the motorcycle is going to survive this, so what does that tell you? For all the sh!t that people who bought Volvo & Saab got because they bought them because of their safety records back in the day, they were the safest cars on the road. If you're buying a Smart Car, safety ain't a priority. Sorry, but we live & die with our choices, & sadley, this old lady does'nt look so smart in the end.

      http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2128511_cobham_crash_victim_named_as_freda_lawry_78

      • I understand it ain't the wisest move. I've seen a few of them around downtown where they belong, and think it'd be crazy to take one on the highway. I realize CAFE would have us all driving them and bouncing off each other like bumper cars at reasonable speeds. I just have a visceral reaction to some dude hot rodding it and messing someone else up, but that was an assumption too (just as I assumed it was some cute young college chick in my mind's eye)

  • I flip off EVERY Smart Car I see. EVERY God damned 1 of them. Only the most smug asshole would even think of looking into these death traps, let alone actaully buying 1. They suck, the people who drive them suck, & this broad who died in hers is all the proof I need about my belief in Darwinism.

    • I want to flip them off, but my business name and number are on the side of my truck. They could be potential customers. However, since they are dumb enough to buy a Stupid Car, I would charge them 50% more, just on principal, and I bet they would pay it!

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