The scariest part about driving is arguably the fear of crashing, but a great way to tackle a fear is to learn more about it. Morbid curiosity has led me to YouTube to watch thousands of crash test videos over the years. I believe I have this admittedly strange infatuation because I love cars but fear crashing, so I want to know what crashes look like and learn about safe cars. Recently, some new crash test videos popped up on my feed; videos I had never seen before, of cars I had never seen crashed before. Cue the morbid curiosity, and cue the Mercedes G-Wagen crash test.
It’s important to note that the models evaluated on this channel are Chinese-market cars, so they likely don’t exactly represent the same models sold in other markets. The website DCar was founded as a subsidiary of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance as a sort of all-in-one car site, but all these tests are reportedly conducted by the Beijing Institute of Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Institute, or BQI. Additional information about the DCar website and these ratings is minimal, but the crash tests are still cool to watch.
In DCar crash tests, each vehicle is evaluated on how well they perform in three different crash scenarios: A30-percent overlap with a tractor trailer at 35 mph, the IIHS’ 40-percent frontal offset crash test against a deformable barrier at 40 mph, and a 70-percent overlap rear-end crash test at 50 mph. I find both the partial overlap with a semi-truck trailer and the rear-impact crash tests to be particularly interesting, since those crash scenarios aren’t often published.
Alongside crash test scenarios that I’ve never seen, this channel also crashes car models I have never seen crash tested before, like a Mercedes-Maybach S480, Land Rover Range Rover and Mercedes-Benz G350. The DCar YouTube channel also tests more accessible cars like a Hyundai Elantra and Toyota RAV4, but you can find plenty of other tests of those models online. If you’re like me and you’re curious about how the one percent may fare should they ever crash their Maybach, then you’ll love these videos.
