Toyota iQ Microcar to be First in the World With Rear Curtain Airbag

That's cool. This could probably work in many other types of cars too, though it would make less difference in a sedan or SUV.

This car and the Smart are nothing but death traps. I am all for going green but I did not feel comforable in that small of a car.

Air bags piss me off. These are suplimental restraints because consumers won't suffer a 5 point harness and helmet. Not one profession racer relies on air bags yet were are led to believe they are the safest way to go...give me a break
Prodivers walk away from 100+ mph crashes and rollovers with out them.

YEAH - "Nothing but death traps"? And this is based on which studies? Cases? Evidence? Tests? Or are we to assume that your level of comfort is directly related to the actual safety of something? If that is the case, I should be able to sue my employers, because this chair they gave me to sit on would probably also be considered a "death trap" by your standard of comfort.

Yeah:Unlike Smart, IQ It got maximum score in security tests in European Agencies (stricter than American) and in reviews:

http://www.channel4.com/4car/rt/city+cars/full+road+test/25044/5

If you want the roll cage from an F1 racer, I dare you to add it to a small car and still have enough room inside and have it reach 60 MPG.

I just read the review on that site you posted above and if I understood that correctly it had not yet been rated by the European agencies. It only said Toyota expected 5 stars. I'm not saying it's not a safe car. I honestly don't know. I know I wouldn't buy it but I'm a pretty big guy so I imagine I'd be quite tight in there :)

the only thing dangerous about small cars are the SUV's on the road with them.

the only thing dangerous about small cars are the SUV's on the road with them.

tiny car!! TYNEEEE !!!

they should have a version of the car thats got no rear seats so that it can fit anybody taller than 5'5 or above the age of 13!!!

and regarding safety, if the smart's anything to go by, I wouldkeep well away from it. soap box cars like this one has an infallible tendency to irritate the crap out of drivers of larger cars. thats when the road gets a whole lot more dangerous, something along the lines of Jeff Dunham saying he used to pick Prius cars out of his hummer H1's grill !! I dont intend to end up being pushed along the road in the equivalent of a motorized shopping cart!!

And Airbags won't really do much in the way of stopping your nose from getting shoved to the back of your head either. the car's all of 6 feet. you hit anything at high speed you won't need a tow truck to get the car off the road, just pack it up in the little suitcase you've got stowed away in the boot space...oh wait, there isn't enough room for one is there..!!

if this car gets popular or there are more like it on the roads, driven by people all hell bent on getting to work or their destination, people would wind where they started, the roads being jammed because of all the small cars on it. In fact then the answer is probably a 2 / 3 wheeler or a monster truck.

all in all, a car thats good for a quick drive to the market, or to push the baby around in while taking a stroll!!

@ Megan
No, the most dangerous thing about a small car (or any vehicle) is the loose nut behind the wheel. YEAH just proves that fact behind a keyboard.

An interessting discussion about safety. Anyway the IQ is not destined for the US. Its target market is Europe and Japan, where cars are generelly smaller and the streets are not so generously built for automobiles like in the US. By the way, a big advantage of the very short and stiff construction of a smart or the IQ is its behavior in side crashes. The intrusion into the compartement is much less severe than in big cars.

@ swissi

well thats great. I actually heard of that report, but what I also heard along with that report was this

The car is presumably very safe because it is small and light yet has low intrusion into the carriage. That is true, because impact testing the car showed very high resilience to impacts without body / chassis / carriage damage even more than larger cars like the bigger mercs and beemers.

Now what I also heard was that since the car is light. has high damage capacity, but because of that, if the driver happened to hit an oncoming vehicle at a high speed, as tends to happen quite a lot on two lane roads, it was noted that a large part of that impact force will cause the car to rebound instead of just crumpling, extremely rigid body structure and all, now the human body does not have the capacity to withstand this rebound force being applied in a fraction of a second. thus the car will be fine, the driver wearing a seatbelt will not..

What I don't understand about all these comments is why people think their POV trumps someone elses. If you don't like small we don't care. Drive your SUV but don't try to deny everyone else choices with your prejudice views. I don't need a tank to get from point A to B I can do on skateboard if I choose if I get killed along the way what's it got do with you, so what's your point?