Chris;114655 wroteActually people die at suburban speeds on suburban roads - 24 drivers and passengers to date in Victoria for 2017. People tend to overestimate the speed at which a death or serious injury can and will occur.
Side impacts are especially risky, with a high likelihood of death or serious injury at anything over 50 where another car is involved, and from as low as 30 kmh sideways into a tree.
Head on crashes are likely to result in death at speeds over 70 kmh. Plenty of people with life changing injuries after a suburban frontal impact in the wrong car as well. The teen weapon of choice, the VN - VS Commodore was rated as having high risk of a serious head injury in an offset frontal suburban speed crash. It's why I got rid of my wife's VP as soon as I found out.
I agree high speed roads are very challenging. Volvo has said it's hard to protect occupants at much over 80 kmh.
The best advice for Emma remains to check howsafeisyourcar. It uses real world crash outcomes to provide safety star ratings, which often differ from the ANCAP test results, typically being lower for a range of reasons.
Again
If you dig into the details and exclude the single vehicle crashes and people over 70 and crashes involving heavy vehicles
There are nearly zero deaths left
The lancers have a bad rep because of single vehicle events (trees) and driving by dumb people at high speed
The realativly low count of v50 in australia or any volvo for that matter also significantly limits the available data
Drive the lancer defensivly and not drunk and not tired and the advantage becomes pretty minimal
Yes a v50 is safer but not in any way that is likely to be effective over the life of the vehicle
Want something safe that a student can afford... there is not much on the market at the 4-5k range that does not have a stupid cost of ownership
Maybe a manual 09 i30 base model is getting close though
