Check out this article and video at Austin Rover Online - a great site for everything British Leyland.

 

minis dont kill people, people kill people, and people kill minis....lol

 

Here, let me take that killer off your hands.....

 

Yeah, but that is a classic mini.. nothing about the safety of more modern minis... this is the safety rating for an 06 for a frontal crash

Driver Passenger Head Injury Criterion 342 700 Chest deceleration (g's) 55 42 Femur load l/r1 (lb) 72 / 242 80 / 561

for a side crash
Front Seat Rear Seat Not TestedHead Injury Criterion2 (HIC) 135 No Data Thoracic Trauma Index (TTI) 64 No Data Pelvis Deceleration (g's) 75 No Data

4 stars out of 5 is acceptable to me.. no car can completely 100% protect everyone.. although i feel invincible in mah mini!

and i know this is the classic mini section.. i noticed itf after i posted lol, but i guess for a comparison between a classic, and 06, ill leave the info..
here's the link where i got it from..
http://www.safecar.gov

 

Safety in your Mini/MINI will depend on your defensive driving to a greater degree than it would for the two or three-ton Hummer driver.

No doubt that our superior stability, handling and braking greatly contribute to our safety in comparison with the behemoths.

The reason that the accident/injury/death rate has not gone down in a direct relationship with the safety improvements has been driver attitude.

Just having Anti-Lock and Stability Control to allow swerving or stopping in half the space of the previous automobiles,
seems to encourage too many drivers to want to 'spend' that advantage by trimming their margins and depending on the car to save their a$$.

The Crash Testing and Rating is done with fixed barriers or constant rams, not collisions between actual automobiles (or trucks).

For example; a head on collision between two one-ton autos will just cause them both to come to a nearly instant stop within the distance of their 'crush zones'.

A head on between a one-ton and a two-ton at the same speed would cause the one-ton not to stop, but to 'instantly' reverse its direction.

So if you were going 30 MPH forward and get 'instantly' accelerated to 20 MPH backward,
the 'G' Force will be equal to a barrier stop from 50 MPH, not 30MPH.

Even if there were absolutely no 'crush damage' to an automobile suffered by an 'instant' stop from speed,
your body is unlikely to survive the tremendous 'G' Forces created and they increase by the square of the speed increase!

 

The classic Mini was a 60's model. It was no better nor worse than any 60's car especially US cars. Drivers used to get impaled on steering columns, passengers would receive severe neck wounds from windshields, gas fillers were in the back under the license plate, roofs would collapse, doors popped open, interiors were all metal and dash ***** stuck out. Remember the Pinto in flames? To single the Mini out is just grinding an axe.

 

Mini/US History 101 - you all need some perspective

The first round of NHSTA standards occured in 1968 with the addition of retractable belts, collapsable steering columns, padded dashes, rocker switches, changes in glass, EGR changes to engines, relocation of fueling, etc.

Although popular, at the time BMC was losing money on every Mini it sold. It was a pure economic decision not to add more costs to the car to bring it to the US where it didn't have an appropriate market anyway.

There were no appreciable numbers of small cars (Falcon, Nova, Dart/Valiant, Corvair) and few foreign cars at the time. Foreign dealers and service were quite widespread geographically and varied in ability. VW had the best network. Toyota, Datsun (Nissan), etc were nowhere but the coasts (mostly California). They had cheap little cars that you could hear rust. Honda 600's (2 cyl) were just coming out. The Civic wouldn't be invented for a few years. There was also resentment among US citizens especially Vets against any "***anese" car. There were some BMW, Renault, Puegeot, and Fiat dealers about. In sports cars it was MG/TR, Jag, and Porsche.

 

Oh, BTW, in the early 60's most American cars were considered junk when they were 3 years old or reached 50,000 miles. Fenders usually needed replaced by then, rockers were rusted as well as trunk floors.

 

I can still remember the old driver ed films where the American cars were wrapped around trees, etc and people died in all sorts of wrecks. Things have come a long way during the evolution of any vehicles... seat belts, head rests, airbags... but watching the beginning of that video makes me want a Classic even more! Oh, to drive like that... what a blast that would be!

BTW- IMHO, I would have guessed the decision made not allowing those to be imported here was based more on financial reasons than safety.

 

In line just behind Minimad, I hereby volunteer to collect all these death machines and save the public from their horror. If you live in the midwest, you can conveniently deposit your classic mini at my curbside. Additionally, if you act now, I'll offer you a $100 gift certificate applicable toward the purchase of a new, safe vehicle of your choice.

 

We'll begin regional collection centers. I'm sure we can find someone for the NW, SW, NE

 

MINI's don't kill... they murder... on the autocross track .

 

This may be true of old american tanks of a car that were designed not to crush in an accident. Its all about conservation of energy in an impact. If both vehicles are perfectly rigid this is true. And yes a car that more mass has more energy. However, modern cars are not designed not to be rigid in an accident. Energy is used up by the crumpilng of the cars involved in the accident. It ends up being a balance between energy absorbtion by the crushing of the car and the amount of crushing that is acceptable to keep the passenger cabin intact. Which is why the new MINI can obtain high crash test ratings. The classic mini is not designed to be rigid or to have controlled crumpling so it basically sucks in an accident.