I want to bring this to the attention of those who might be shopping for fuel-efficient cars.
ESC is considered to be the greatest advance in safety since the seatbelt. It will be required on all 2012 cars in the US, but it's still optional or not available on some 2010 and 2011 models: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#Effectiveness Fuel-efficient cars tend to be the ones that don't ESC as a standard feature. With a little care, you can get a fuel-efficient car with near- optimal safety. This is good site to use: www.informedforlife.org But be aware that informedforlife uses average values when NHTSA or IIHS did not test a particular safety parameter. This can bias the safety measure for some models. You can see which values are missing and replaced with the average if you look carefully at the data displays. This site identifies which cars have ESC standard, optional, or not available: http://www.iihs.org/research/topics/esc.html When ESC is optional on a model you have to research the trims (aka sub-models) of the model. For instance, for the Honda Fit, google the words "Hond fit safety review" or "Honda fit stability control" without parenthesis. You will find that only Sport trim of the 2010 Honda Fit has ESC. I noticed that 2 people in my vanpool were looking into buying a Fit and were probably going to end up exposing themselves and their families to a car without ESC for the next decade. The EU has a good ESC awareness site : www.chooseesc.eu There is probably only one consumer product that you ever buy that has a 1 in 500 chance of killing you, and it's a motor vehicle. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
