KayGee
Explorer Addict
- Joined
- March 27, 2017
- Messages
- 1,421
- Reaction score
- 366
- City, State
- Farmington, MI
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- '16 & '17 PIU
The Explorer was marginal on the driver side offset and poor on the passenger side offset - it didn't just struggle on one specific test. No one is saying the tests represent true real world results, but they roughly translate and give an idea of how things may go. Crashed vehicles don't tell you anything either about what happened to the occupants in the crash, I've seen more than a few vehicles that didn't look that bad, yet people died. I've also seen a few vehicles that looked horrific and everyone survived. The real key is what injuries the occupants sustained and whether they are truly worse in the real world in some vehicles moreso than others. For that, I am not currently aware of anyone tracking and reporting that data to the public.Respectfully, they're grandstanding. Read the logic of the comment. "There are clearly better choices out there especially if you are concerned about the safety of your family." Tone is key. If you buy one, you clearly don't care about your family, according to IIHS. Is that extreme? Absolutely. I like the concept of the test, I don't like the subtext. It's true that there are vehicles passing this test that can provide an additional safety advantage that the Explorer presently lacks. But struggling on this one specific test hardly makes it unworthy of consideration. It's a shortcoming that has to be evaluated against the merits of the car and your own risk appetite, balanced with the likelihood of suffering this one specific crash scenario.
Again, if you want real crash tests, go look at IAAI. Insurance auction site. Look for wrecked Explorers 2011-2018. You'll find that the VAST majority of them have intact passenger cabins. I appreciate lab testing, but I also like real world data of the crashes actually occurring.
Either way, this platform is going to die and go away. Ford knows they have to address this, and they are.
IIHS tests aren't the end all, be all of anything. With the sales of the Explorer and Grand Cherokee, there are obviously hundreds of thousands of people that either don't care about safety or rank it lower than other things, based on the sales numbers for these two vehicles. Do all these people clearly not give a **** about their family? I don't think so. My guess is that they buy based on the same assumptions as everyone else - they expect cars today to be better than cars of the past and they don't expect to be in an accident, so they choose based on a multitude of other factors - vehicle looks/features/cost/etc... and safety is a passing thought because all vehicles have many of the same safety features, so they must be relatively safe.
The tone is the same as many other reviews, whether they be TVs, phones, motorcycles, whataver. I've read lots of reviews that say things like "if you value X or really care about Y then this is the product for you or this is not the product for you." At the end of the day we can all interpret things the way we want, but, again, I have yet to see the words "the Explorer is a death trap" or "do not buy the Explorer" in an article and attributed to IIHS.
The problem isn't going to die and go away. Many manufacturers only seem to do the bare minimum by designing to testing that they want to tout in their marketing. In a few years, I am sure IIHS will find that manufacturers are again designing to the tests at the time and may introduce a new test to simulate a new crash scenario and vehicles that weren't specifically designed for that, probably won't do well on the new test. Wash, rinse, repeat...