The difference in bumper height between different vehicles, a subject studied by the IIHS

A couple of years ago, the driver of a Mazda RX-8 unfortunately got distracted and hit me while I was stopped waiting for the light to change. To be honest, the impact wasn’t strong at all, but his car’s grille left a mark on the rear bumper of my 4×4, while my vehicle absorbed the hit without even a scratch. Still, I often think about what would happen if a car even lower than that Mazda hit me, considering that after the rear bumper, the only obstacle left is the fuel tank…

I’m telling you all this because the American IIHS has published a study on damage in collisions caused by differences in bumper heights. The study looked at the uneven height between the bumper of an SUV and that of a smaller, lower car, and also took as a reference the damage each car would sustain. To do so, they ran several rear-end crash tests simulating impacts at a speed of 16 km/h.

16 km/h may not sound like much (worse crashes have been seen), but if we consider that a Toyota RAV-4 caused damage worth nearly 9,000 euros to a Toyota Corolla at that seemingly very low speed, the danger of driving a car that is lower (or higher) than others is real and exists, and it is a problem to which manufacturers pay little attention.

Given these results, the intervention of the NHTSA has been requested so that it gets involved in adopting standard measures for bumper heights across all vehicles, including SUVs, off-road vehicles, vans and pick-ups. To be honest, an SUV would face some technical and design challenges in matching its bumper height to that of a smaller car, another challenge that manufacturers would have to tackle.

In the meantime, for those curious to see how the 14 cars used in the experiment performed, there is a very interesting comparison table at the link in the source.

Source | IIHS