At Full Chat

If you're an overweight middle-aged Londoner, your name is Mike and you're driving a Swedish-built car, keep looking in your rear view mirror for uninvited flying missiles. I say this because in recent months, both myself and Mike Brewer - my TV co-presenter in the next series of Pulling Power and fellow Auto Express columnist - have found ourselves being driven into the back of as we've sat in Volvos.

Auto Express Car Reviews

By Mike Rutherford

10th May 2005

Before each accident we were stationary for some time, minding our own business and doing nothing wrong. The other drivers concerned seemingly made no attempt to brake or take evasive action. And I mention the following not to score points, but because it's a fact: the guilty parties were both women. Being the sort of bloke he is, Brewer's shunt was bigger, bolder, badder, braver and bloodier than the one I had. But I was blessed with the presence of a very bright witness who went beyond the call of duty by calming everyone down, organising the all-important exchange of names and addresses and - most gratifying of all - comforting the kids in my car.

Frankly, I'm getting mightily fed-up with people driving into the back of me when I'm sitting in stationary cars. So far, it's happened at a T-junction, in a car park, on a country lane when I dared to stop for an oncoming coach taking up the entire road, in an M25 traffic jam, at a toll booth and now at a set of traffic lights. And she said she didn't see me. I was in a dirty great, brightly coloured Volvo, for heaven's sake!

Euro NCAP crash tests are more than welcome and better than nothing, but they seem obsessed with front-end accident damage. Yet, along with millions of others, I suspect, I haven't put the nose of a car into a wall, a tree or vehicle for decades. But I do get punted from behind with frightening regularity. In other words, crash protection at the rear is, I think, at least as important as such protection at the front.

So I need to know which cars protect occupants best when they're hit from behind. Does a large saloon do a better job of safeguarding those on board than a large estate or hatchback? How vulnerable are passengers - usually kids - on the third row of seats when they're effectively sitting in the boot with their heads very close to the rear screen? If a vehicle much bigger than a tiny Smart ForTwo hits one up the backside, are the consequences as disastrous as I fear they might be?

The car makers aren't telling, so I'm pleading with Euro NCAP to provide the life-saving rear-end crash tests we require. Meanwhile, I have little alternative but to rely on my entirely unscientific but first-hand research which tells me that big, heavy Volvos, Mercs and Jeeps do pretty well, as does the Honda Civic. Whether you're an industry insider or not, I'd be keen to hear from you on this subject, particularly if you have genuine and useful information to pass on to fellow Auto Express readers.