It has crumple zones, and bits of the drive train fly off and help dissipate the energy of the crash. Smarts don’t have big lumps of machine in front of the driver, those machines really want to snuggle up to you very quickly in a crash, not having one means a crumple zone is more effective, like in a Tesla for example.
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Well thats a load off. The snuggle comment made me exhale air out of my nose.
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There was actually a real world test on one of the UK shows DRIVE or 5th Gear I can’t remember.
Basically though it’s one giant cage, and apart from that being small and light it gets Bumped/shunted rather than exerting it’s mass into the crash.
So in a crash it may get bounced down the road in the opposit direction, but it will be in a rigid safety cell…
Over here in Europe we have the ENCAP rating and they score very well.
Personaly I HATE small cars, perhaps it’s due to being in a collision with a wall in a MK1 mini when i was ~8 . But I also find the ride is dreadful.
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I got it cheap and almost own it. Ive heard the same things about the roll cage, but i cant help but think im going to get jostled worse in a ping pong ball. I commute to the city, decent gas milage and can parallel park like whoa. The ride is shit, but tolerable if you arnt crossing multiple states.
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The modern ones have the same stability systems on them as the Mercedes vans, makes them very stable, unlike the old ones. Also the ride is quite different, feels more like a large car… except the Brabus or Sport versions, which are a little more bumpy. The stability system is a little annoying when you want to hang the arse out.
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I drive like a grandma.
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That’s an unfortunate thing that happened to you, I never felt safe in a mini either. 
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I drive sensibly, but can go very fast and have done some very, very silly things with motor vehicles with 2, 3 and 4 wheels. It’s nice to still have the option of going into turbo mode in an emergency situation. 
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Todd
Bellingham, WA, US
Dev, Auto recycling industry
Cars: Turbo subarus
lost interest in playing guitar, still learning synthesizers and playing piano
very new to electronics
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I worked at a wrecking yard, we had a bunch of smart cars there. Most all had minimal damage.
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Q1. Mike
Q2. DFW Metroplex, Texas
Q3. …Transportation…
Q4. Merc or 24 year old full size 4x4 Dodge pickup with Cummins diesel engine… I drive the Merc to work…
Q5. Acapella singing…Baritone.
Q6. Took one class of basic electronics in college, and some dead language computer programming classes…everything else is from hobbies and just messing around.
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Found the COBOL programmer.
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No COBOL…only FORTRAN and PASCAL
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Matthew
Chesterfield, UK
Full Time Secondary School Student
Can’t drive Yet!
Been playing Guitar since I was 10
Learning I Guess
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Pascal! Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long, long time.
I did mostly FORTRAN up through the mid 1990s. In more recent years had to look at some FORTRAN code and it was like trying to decypher ancient Greek.
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Full Time… LOL… I have an 11 & 15 year old, I know what full time is at the moment!
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I did pascal for 3 years before going to university and learning ADA, I got 100% in my ADA module much to the annoyance of the lecturer… The Cobol module was more in the lower percentages, much, much lower…
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Well, at the moment I have unfortunately turned into a full time procrastinator, and I go on kicad and this forum more than my actual school work 
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Sebastian
Bremen, Germany
Glaciologist, numerical modeler
Bike
Learned acoustic guitar once, then played a bit of bass in a band for a few months.
I know basic electronics from my childhood experiment kits xD
FORTRAN is still in use in the scientific community btw 
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