by: Ray

The 2012 BMW 3 Series has achieved the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s (IHHS) “Top Safety Pick”. Rated as “Good”, the highest rating the IHHS given out for their 40 mph frontal crash, side crash, rear crash protection, and roll-over protection.

The IHHS requires stability control systems on vehicles to be considered for a Top Safety Pick. BMW takes advantage of the 3 Series’s Dynamic Stability Control (standard on all BMW vehicles since 2000) and Active Head Restrain in addition to advancements in vehicle design architecture. We all know accidents are a part of our daily lives. Therefore BMW is working hard on accident avoidance technology, many of which are equipped in the new 328i and 335i 4-door sedan. Rollover protection is one of the latest crash tests that the Institute is conducting. It is meant to test a vehicle’s roof structure in rollover events. The test is fairly simple, it does not include an actual rollover of the vehicle being tested…

A metal plate comes into contact with the roof, then a constant force gets applied behind it, pushes the roof down to displace it by 5 inches The the maximum force registered is recorded, then compared to the vehicle’s weight to identify if the roof can hold the vehicle’s weight in the event of a rollover.

On models equipped with BMW AssistTM, vehicle collision sensors calculate the significance of a crash then automatically notify emergency crews to send help to the crash scene. Additionally, the new F30 3-Series comes with available Bluetooth mobile for distraction free driving, head up display, lane departure warning, blind spot warning, and rear mounted camera, as well as front and side airbags with head protection.