The "crash tests" - impact tests, in good Portuguese - serve to measure the levels of passive safety of cars, that is, the ability of a car to minimize the consequences of an accident, whether through seat belts or protection bars side, airbags, programmed body deformation zones, shatterproof windows or low absorption bumpers, among others.
Conducted by Euro NCAP in the “old continent”, by IIHS in the USA and by Latin NCAP in Latin America and the Caribbean, these tests consist of simulations of accidents in real situations, performed at maximum speeds of 64 km/h.
Although accidents are recorded well above this speed, studies prove that the overwhelming majority of fatal accidents occur at up to 64 km/h. Most of the time, when a vehicle traveling, for example, at 100 km/h, collides with an obstacle in front of it, rarely at the moment of impact the speed is 100 km/h. Before the collision, the driver's instinct is to try to stop the vehicle as quickly as possible, which reduces the speed to values closer to 64 km/h.
Also, most crash tests follow the “Offset 40” standard. What is the “Offset 40” pattern? It is the typology of a collision in which only 40% of the front collides with another object. This is because in most accidents, at least one of the drivers tries to deviate from its trajectory, which means that a 100% frontal impact rarely occurs.