Mitsubishi Side Impact

HLDI on importance of side impact testing:

Today's passenger vehicles are more crashworthy than they used to be, especially in frontal crashes. As occupant protection in frontal crashes improves, the relative importance of protection in side impacts increases. From the early 1980s until 2000, driver death rates per million cars registered decreased 47 percent. Most of this improvement was in frontal crashes, in which driver death rates decreased 52 percent. In contrast, the decrease in side impacts was only 24 percent.

In crashes with another passenger vehicle, 51 percent of driver deaths in recent model cars during 2000-01 occurred in side impacts, up from 31 percent in 1980-81. During the same time, the proportion of deaths in frontal impacts declined from 61 percent to 43 percent.

These changes are attributable to two effects. There have been significant improvements in frontal crash protection — standard airbags, improved structural designs, and higher belt use rates, for example. At the same time, growing sales of SUVs and pickups have exacerbated height mismatches among passenger vehicles, thereby increasing the risks to occupants of many vehicles struck in the side. In crashes between cars and other passenger vehicles during 2000-01, almost 60 percent of the driver deaths in the cars struck on the driver side were hit by SUVs or pickups — up from about 30 percent during 1980-81.

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Unlike head restraint and bumber testing, not many Mitsubishi models seem to have been tested for side impact. (NCAP of NHTSA/US Department of Transprtation, however has good data on this.) 2001-2004 Montero was tested and was found Marginal in case of right leg/root injury possibility. Much more serious was the poor performance of 2003-2004 Outlander that failed most of the side impact tests - rated as poor in driver protection categories.

2004 Mitsubishi Galant ES 'Poor' on IIHS's Side Impact Test.

Mitsubishi 2003-2004 Outlander Fails the Side Impact Test.

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(Last Updated: February 5, 2004.)