I love the Scout, a vehicle which occupies a special spot in my heart. Back when I was a small child, my dad had a '77 Scout II, and he took me to preschool and kindergarten in it sometimes. I thought that Scout, with its rugged good looks and large size, was awesome. I also loved how high it sat up.
A 5-year-old riding in the front seat of a Scout would be illegal today in most jurisdictions. But this was 1998. By then, most parents put kids in the back in cars with airbags, but without airbags it was still commonplace to see kids in the front. The Scout was 21 years old at that time, hardly a new vehicle.
There was also no way to know for most people back then how well the Scout would do in a frontal crash. The YouTube video of the test was still 15 years away from being uploaded, meaning that you would know only if you had access to old NHTSA records, which probably weren't available online until the 2000s.
The video on this page shows a 1978 International Scout II being crash tested into a wall at only 30 mph, and the results are, to put it succinctly, terrible. Here's the four big problems:
1. From external appearances, the Scout looks like it would be a strong vehicle. In fact, it's too strong - in the wrong areas. The stiff front end doesn't crumple much, allowing the occupant compartment to suffer a high deceleration.
2. The occupant compartment is too weak, allowing major intrusion - steering column and dashboard movement here are severe, and survival space is greatly reduced.
3. The structures inside the car are harsh, with lots of unyielding metal on the dashboard, which, remember, is being pushed inside the occupant compartment. There is no padding on the dashboard.
4. With all the problems seen so far, a good seat belt and airbag system probably would still allow serious injuries. But this is 1978, and dual airbags are a decade or more away even on luxury cars, so no airbags here. All you get to restrain you is a lap belt, which is shown to be woefully inadequate - the driver dummy's chest is impaled by the steering wheel, and its head slams into the dashboard top; the passenger's head slams into the windshield.
Due to an instrumentation failure, nothing after the 68 millisecond mark of this crash test was measured. Since the severest impacts on the dummies appear to be in the 75-95 millisecond range, they were missed. The head injury criteria (HIC) were measured at only 66 for the driver and 43 for the passenger, which are obviously very inaccurate. 1,000 is the threshold for serious injury, and under 400 means you're probably uninjured.
The extremely violent head contact seen on the video show that the HIC was probably well over 1,000 for both occupants, possibly over 2,000.
The cut-off for serious chest injury is 60 g's - the driver dummy in this Scout measured 90 g's, and that's just before the instrumentation cut out. Again, it's likely that the actual forces experienced were even more severe.
In summation, it's likely that both occupants would have been killed - severe injuries if they were very lucky. And this is at only 30 mph.
In most cars of the time, your injuries in this crash scenario would not have been serious. But the Scout is an SUV, not a car. Before about 1990, SUVs had to meet much less stringent safety standards than cars. The Scout's design also dated back to 1961 - before the first rounds of federal safety standards came out beginning in 1966. Most of the cars of the time had designs dating to 1974-1978.
A 5-year-old riding in the front seat of a Scout would be illegal today in most jurisdictions. But this was 1998. By then, most parents put kids in the back in cars with airbags, but without airbags it was still commonplace to see kids in the front. The Scout was 21 years old at that time, hardly a new vehicle.
There was also no way to know for most people back then how well the Scout would do in a frontal crash. The YouTube video of the test was still 15 years away from being uploaded, meaning that you would know only if you had access to old NHTSA records, which probably weren't available online until the 2000s.
The video on this page shows a 1978 International Scout II being crash tested into a wall at only 30 mph, and the results are, to put it succinctly, terrible. Here's the four big problems:
1. From external appearances, the Scout looks like it would be a strong vehicle. In fact, it's too strong - in the wrong areas. The stiff front end doesn't crumple much, allowing the occupant compartment to suffer a high deceleration.
2. The occupant compartment is too weak, allowing major intrusion - steering column and dashboard movement here are severe, and survival space is greatly reduced.
3. The structures inside the car are harsh, with lots of unyielding metal on the dashboard, which, remember, is being pushed inside the occupant compartment. There is no padding on the dashboard.
4. With all the problems seen so far, a good seat belt and airbag system probably would still allow serious injuries. But this is 1978, and dual airbags are a decade or more away even on luxury cars, so no airbags here. All you get to restrain you is a lap belt, which is shown to be woefully inadequate - the driver dummy's chest is impaled by the steering wheel, and its head slams into the dashboard top; the passenger's head slams into the windshield.
Due to an instrumentation failure, nothing after the 68 millisecond mark of this crash test was measured. Since the severest impacts on the dummies appear to be in the 75-95 millisecond range, they were missed. The head injury criteria (HIC) were measured at only 66 for the driver and 43 for the passenger, which are obviously very inaccurate. 1,000 is the threshold for serious injury, and under 400 means you're probably uninjured.
The extremely violent head contact seen on the video show that the HIC was probably well over 1,000 for both occupants, possibly over 2,000.
The cut-off for serious chest injury is 60 g's - the driver dummy in this Scout measured 90 g's, and that's just before the instrumentation cut out. Again, it's likely that the actual forces experienced were even more severe.
In summation, it's likely that both occupants would have been killed - severe injuries if they were very lucky. And this is at only 30 mph.
In most cars of the time, your injuries in this crash scenario would not have been serious. But the Scout is an SUV, not a car. Before about 1990, SUVs had to meet much less stringent safety standards than cars. The Scout's design also dated back to 1961 - before the first rounds of federal safety standards came out beginning in 1966. Most of the cars of the time had designs dating to 1974-1978.
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