An Arlington-based advocacy group has teamed with Consumer Reports to make crash test videos available online to safety-conscious car shoppers.
The videos are produced by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“Consumers are doing more and more automobile research online when they buy a new car, and safety information is always cited as an important aspect of the buying process, especially when customers have families,” IIHS spokesman Russ Rader said.
Consumer Reports is lending narration to the videos so when individuals watch them, they understand how the dummies in the films are injured and how a car’s safety features might protect them, according to Consumer Reports spokesman Douglas Love.
“Many of us when we look at a video see a perfectly functioning car get destroyed, with pieces of the car all over the ground, but we don’t understand what it means,” Love said. “The voice-over is really intended to demonstrate how the car performs, how something like side airbags help during impact.”
Consumer Report’s Web site has nearly 3 million subscribers who will now be exposed to the videos, Love said.
Traditionally, IIHS has reached consumers through avenues such as television commercials, Rader said. IIHS hopes the Web site will better reach people who are considering making a car purchase, he added.
IIHS will make a free video feed available to any site interested in featuring the videos, and sites such as MSN Autos also plan to show them, Rader said.
