Thread: How safe is a D4?

ANCAP ratings are subjective and not really effective between different types of vehicles.

From their site:
ANCAP safety ratings can be used to compare the relative safety between cars of similar mass.

So smacking a Yaris (5 star) with a D4 (4 star) you are much better off in the D4...

Ever see the pic of the D4 that hit the Audi (I think it was) head on at over 200km/h?

Discovery occupants climbed out of the vehicle - worst injury was a broken bone. The Audi driver was scraped off of the motor, in the boot, with an egg slice...

Have a look here.
The D3/4 wasn't tested locally so not all criteria were reported which hurt its rating.

Also the main loss of a star was Pedestrian safety..

http://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.ancap.co...pdf?1433214278

Still a very safe vehicle.

Maybe it's just the video but the crashes in the sport appear a lot more violent than in the big disco - big disco is lucky to get its rear wheels off the ground in the frontal impacts - the sport bounces off in a more violent reaction throwing the occupants in changes of direction. As mentioned above - the inertia of the bigger mass is always going to win, so the closer you are to being the biggest mass the better... Mind you also takes more effort to slow/stop the bigger mass so more risk of higher speed impact. Also more internal space puts occupants further from the metal

I understood that 5 star was extra pedestrian safety over 4 star, nothing to do with occupant safety.

The D4 is the same vehicle as the D3 body and chassis-wise so nothing gained by crash-testing a D4.

Edit: Sorry Tombie, I missed your comment re pedestrian safety.

As with all large 4wds I would not like to put one on it's roof. Compared to other large 4wds I have driven, and I think I have driven them all, I don't think anything compares in braking and handling other than a Range Rover or some 'soft roaders'. In my opinion this is a true measure of safety in being able to avoid the crash in the first place.

Pedestrians rate about the same as a cyclist on the food chain dont they Tombie
Andrew

The Disco Sport I had as a loaner had bonnet mounted airbags for pedestrians.I would guess the D5 will get them,are they on the new RRS Sport????
Andrew