MMAL fixes i-MiEV child safety

Australia is the first market in the Mitsubishi world to approve the i-MiEV's design for use on public roads -- but that approval didn't come easy. The i-MiEV was rejected initially by crash safety bureaucrats in Canberra (more here) -- but it wasn't for anything as assumption-worthy as frontal offset safety.

No, the i-MiEV may look like it would crumple under the blow of a bug hitting the windscreen, but it was actually rejected for child safety seat anchorage -- not the first time this issue has been raised by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional development and Local Government (DITRDLG).

With that issue resolved, the electrically-powered Mitsubishi is now fully compliant with Australian design rules -- as is the petrol-fuelled donor car, the Mitsubishi i.

According to Mitsubishi's Manager for Corporate Communications, Robert Chadwick, the i-MiEV employs the same RISE safety technology (Reinforced Impact Safety Evolution) found in the company's Lancer small car. The loads from any frontal impact, even in a car with the short front overhang of the i-MiEV, will be channelled back through the body to spread those loads and reduce risk to the occupants.

"Where previously you had to have crumple zones," he said, "it takes the impact and spreads it around, all through the RISE bodyshell."

Chadwick explains also that the 'kei-class' requirements have been eased by the Japanese government in recent years, allowing extra width to deal with side impacts. This has trickled through to the i-MiEV.

As an aside, the Carsales Network learned from Chadwick's colleague and project engineer for the i-MiEV's ADR compliance, Ashley Sanders, that the setbacks in the ADR compliance process for the small electric vehicle were specifically related to ADR 34-01 (child restraint) and other safety-related ADRs, 42, 43 and 44.

Sanders is an unashamed fan of the European ISOFIX system, but accepts that if you need a top tether to pass ADRs here, so be it.

"We've got a federal government that's convinced [the current] system is superior," he said. When put to him that there's a school of thought beyond just the government that child safety capsules and seats are safer with a top tether -- provided they're mounted correctly -- he makes the point that the jury's still out and there's insufficient empirical evidence supporting that view.

"Crash statistics in Europe are not significantly different from Australia's," he said, but qualified that with the observation that the sampling is too small for any valid conclusions to be drawn from analysis of the data.