The little 2012 Chevy Sonic may not possess the weight or the amount of sheetmetal as say, a Chevy Silverado, but that doesn’t mean the car can’t protect its passengers. As it turns out, it’s pretty good, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration awarded it five stars in overall safety. It seems that ten standard airbags can go a long way in a car that small. But does it make you consider going subcompact? Sound off in the comment section below and let us know.
2012 Chevy Sonic Passes NHTSA Crash Test With Five Star Safety Rating
Comments
I finally took delivery of my 2012 Chevy Sonic LTZ Hatchback Turbo and I love it!
I’m impressed with all the reviews (albeit the brake recall is a bit embarrassing), and the only gripe I have is not being able to put chains on during the wintertime when the State Patrol makes it mandatory in order to drive over the mountain passes here in the Seattle, Washington area.
The five-star overall safety rating is fantastic! 😀
Now I’m curious about the new 2013 Chevy Spark that’s due to arrive here this Summer. It’ll also have 10 air bags and as a micro-compact, I’m curious to see how it’ll do.
BTW: Did you know the Sonic Hatchback is considered a Subcompact while the larger Sedan qualifies as a Compact!
Im getting a bit concerned, when a subcompact and virtually every new car scores high marks in a newly updated and significantly harder NHTSA test, then there is a problem.
I feel like their are two scenarios to this phenonoma:
the NHTSA is either becoming irrevelent
or
their testing standards are flawed
By irrevelent I mean it is no longer neccessary because every car has become safe enough so that if just the current standards were maintained, then cars have reached their limit of safety, and any other additional improvements in safety would just result in a marginal and virtual benefit to the consumer, in short, more safety standards just for the sake of safety standards and not standard that will really improve safety in cars
As for the second scenario, I have noticed that the higher number of airbags result in a direct increase in the cars scores, does the NHTSA award these scores on the number of airbags or becuase a greater number of airbags meaningfully increase safety in the real world?
Im not arguing against or discouraging safety, but I am asking myself have cars reached their point of maximum safety, and those that would argue that it hasnt, im sure such a point does exist, and am wondering when will we reach it.
Keep in mind that I may be wrong on any or all of my points and that Im just throwing my ideas out.