Wierd facts and good advice about the ever-changing auto industry

Update, March 6, 2013: Today I found a little-known tool that will prove to be a gold nugget for anyone in the used car market. Use the site below to check the recall and "secret warranty" history of any used car for free. This terrific tool allows you to check the integrity of a car based on year, make, and model. The manufacturer might fix mechanical failures listed here for free, even if a recall was never done! Happy shopping -
http://www.edmunds.com/car-maintenance/guide-page.html

Let's face it - it's an exciting time to alive. The interesting and downright odd statistics that I find online compel me to pass them along. I bet you'll learn something you didn't know...
 

M for Maserati: Nice color, but you're safer in a white one

Who knew that the color of your car determines its safety? Is black truly more likely to crash than silver, for instance?  A thorough study conducted by an Australian university will have you wondering.

Even the most unlikely branch of the auto industry has skeletons under the hood. Drivers of hybrids, those angelic, planet-friendly Superheroes, are more likely to hit a pedestrian than drivers of regular gasoline-powered vehicles. Scandalous, indeed.

In a moment I'll tell you how to watch out for Jack the Jaywalker. But first, let's take a moment to be grateful for the people in our progressive society that collect statistics. As boring of a job as it might seem, it's profoundly important: imagine living in a country that doesn't publish safety information on cars, car seats, food, drugs, etc. These countries exist, and I for one thank God I don't live in one. Say it with me: America, yeah! 

Point being, we can easily apply public knowledge and turn it into power. So let's get started. 

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tells us hybrids may be 20 percent more likely to be involved in pedestrian crashes with injuries than their all-gasoline twins. "When hybrids operate in electric-only mode pedestrians can't hear them approaching," said one of the study's leaders, "so they might step out into the roadway without checking first to see what's coming."

Even if you have no plans to own a hybrid in the future, we're all pedestrians at some point, and it's just as much our responsibility to look out for ourselves as it is the driver to be defensive. Survival of the fittest means being mentally fit, too.

If you, like me, are among the Americans who own or who plan to purchase a hybrid soon, then you also might want to know that the IIHS is a non-profit, independently-funded crash test group dedicated to reducing the losses — deaths, injuries, and property damage — from crashes on the nation's highways. Anyone can go to their web site and review crash test results for a car they own or are considering owning (hybrid or not.) What excites me particularly is that several hybrids are now topping the list for safest cars.

Inevitably the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight have become the latest hybrids to get the IIHS's Top Safety Pick award. But many other types of vehicles tested well, too. Ford has made a big push to make a mark of its own in safety. So Ford's trophy case, including Volvo, Lincoln and Mercury, now includes more Top Safety Pick awards than any other manufacturer.

Honda Civic Hybrid: A Top Safety Pick if you like sedans

To earn the award, a vehicle has to earn top scores in the Institute's front- and side-crash tests as well as its whiplash protection tests. It also has to be available with electronic stability control, a feature that helps avoid loss of control during sharp turns or sudden maneuvers. This technology, which helps drivers to maintain control in abrupt maneuvers, could reduce the risk of a fatal crash by as much as a third, according to the Institute's research.

If you're interested in a hybrid, the new Ford Fusion is giving other hybrid sedans a run for their money in terms of sleek design and fuel economy. EPA estimates are 41 MPG in the city and 36 MPG on the highway. Here's a link to a great video that shows off the features of Ford's newest green machine: http://money.cnn.com/video/pf/2009/05/21/pf.dapena.ford.fusion.review.cnnmoney/

But buyers beware: hybrid manufactuter is still a budding science. If you are like me and you're prodding around the used market, we're looking at vehicles from the past decade, when hybrids were almost experimental. No wonder many of the first models out the womb have a long list of recalls and technical issues, like the Toyota Highlander Hybrid which was born in 2006. It took a class action suit to get Toyota to step up and replace the faulty inverters which made many new Highlander owners spit green out instead of save it. That's a $9,000 repair. Ouch. Case in point: do your homework and read reviews. And if you can avoid buying the first edition or version of anything, do so.

All hiccups aside I'd still consider a model from the late 2000's as long as the seller agrees to address issues and lower the price if necessary. But one thing I'll never do is buy a sedan for my day-to-day driving. This is due to "crash physics": It's well known that size and weight influence injury likelihood. In a collision involving two vehicles that differ in size and weight, the people in the smaller, lighter vehicle will be at a disadvantage. The bigger, heavier vehicle will push the smaller, lighter one backward on impact. This means less force on people in the heavier vehicle and more on the people in the lighter one. Greater force means greater risk, so people in the smaller, lighter vehicle are more likely to be injured. 

Even in single-vehicle crashes, heavier vehicles have an advantage because they are more likely to move, bend, or deform objects they hit.

Ford Escape Hybrid: Even Mother Nature would be proud 

In short, there are too many "real-life" dummies on the road NOT watching where they are going. I feel good and right in my mid-size truck, and I'll feel even better when I trade her in for a Ford Escape Hybrid. To this day I can remember the first time I ever drove a truck with my Uncle Mark. We were in the country and I liked the power and feel. Even though I wasn't convinced that day that I'd be a truck owner, he certainly planted the seed. Now you won't catch me in anything else. Until, of course, my Maserati is delivered for "play time."

As for whether or not I'll insist on white, well, that's probably being a bit too stringent. But for those of you curious about the study I mentioned when we started, Monash University in Melbourne studied more than 850,000 multi-vehicle collisions to find that no other shade of automotive paint was safer than white when it came to vehicles involved in collisions (no matter what the time of day or ambient light level). In daylight bang-ups, black cars had the worst luck with a 12-per-cent higher risk than white. Grey was second, at 11-per-cent riskier, and our Canadian favourite, silver, came in third with a 10-per-cent margin. Red and blue were tied for fourth.

Why white is safest, I'm not sure. But if anyone has any guesses, I'm all ears. Signing off, this is Cherry Pie. Thanks for reading and please don't forget to comment, even if it's just to throw cabbage at my head and tell me to keep my day job ;D 

Sources That Provided Data For Today's Blog:

http://www.edmunds.com/car-maintenance/guide-page.html

http://money.cnn.com/video/pf/2009/05/21/pf.dapena.ford.fusion.review.cnnmoney/

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/autos/0908/gallery.safest_hybrids/index.html

http://www.iihs.org/

http://www.iihs.org/news/rss/pr111711.html

http://www.driving.ca/safest+colour/2246342/story.html