I drive an SUV for my commute and for any long road trips.

We have a 2003 Civic, used by my wife to travel with our kid around the city to parks/schools etc. It is running perfectly (under 80K miles, brought brand new 11 years back). Only thing that concerns me a bit is safety. While Civic EX has very nice quality for its age/price, it only has two front air-bags. I am sure Civic is decent in safety department but now that we've a kid in backseat all the time, we started wondering if we need to upgrade.

We'd only like a small car (compact/sub-compact). Do you guys think New Fit is worth the upgrade in safety department over 2003 Civic?

 

It is now fitted with side air curtains and an airbag in the seat side along with a greatly improved drivers cabin. I would think it is considerably safer than something 10 years old. I don't think they have released the new data yet but prior to the offset crash that killed the overall ratings the Fit was top rated for safety.

 

If the Civic has low miles and nothing wrong with it, I would hesitate on replacing it. Keep in mind that the Fit is a different class of car from the Civic and you will be moving from a compact to a subcompact. While the 2015 Fit is expected to pass all the IIHS tests, I'm not sure that alone is reason to get rid of a car that is operating with no mechanical issues and is fully paid off.

If you are financially able to replace the car now, I suppose you could do worse than a Fit. 2003-2005 Civics do not have the best IIHS ratings. The current model Civic does however, and offers the same kinds of tech and safety as Fit for a little more money (as does the Accord). Both models are family-oriented, fuel efficient, and get top safety marks.

I'm only getting a Fit because that is as much car as I can afford right now.

 

Thank you both for your perspectives. I will keep the class difference in my mind when I test drive FIT soon.

 

Well, if there are no airbags in the back then they just aren't there. Definitely a safety improvement in all cars in general in the last 11 years. I don't know about your Civic specifically.

The new Fit is expected to pass even the small overlap test with flying colors, it has an all new frame designed for safety and to pass the tests better than the previous gen which was very good except for the small overlap.

 

We traded our "paid for" 2008 Honda Fit, for a new 2015 Honda Fit, so our two daughters who attend University of Tennessee, would have a safe new car for the commute between our home and school. The idea of new brakes and tires also appealed to us. For us, the warranty, combined with the improved safety factor, made the decision for us.

 

The only thing I'm concerned about with the fit is that it's much smaller than the totalled 2001 accord I drove. Does size have anything to do with safety still?

 

Size can matter, it's all physics. Smaller cars are at a disadvantage to larger cars in any collision.

Still, a regularly maintained car that is driven defensively with driver and all passengers wearing seat belts should provide a reasonable level of safety. It depends on your means and whether you can/want to spend the money to get a new car. I don't currently have a car and was considering a used Fit or Corolla, but the new one provides tech features as well as safety features that I like and within the amount of money I'm willing to spend. I spend a lot of time in traffic, so I have to consider comfort and fuel economy as well. If I already owned a Fit from a prior year and wasn't having any mechanical difficulties with it, I think I'd rather save the money for something else though. Fit is a pretty recent model of car here in the US compared to others.

 

CONSUMER REPORTS:

"The magazine says that in the wake of a poor crash test, the Honda Fit is no longer a Recommended vehicle. The Fit bombed the small-overlap front-crash test, and it wasn't the only small car to do so; of the 11 subcompacts tested, only the Chevrolet Spark was considered adequate in the tough test.

But Consumer Reports especially singles out the Fit here, saying it and the Fiat 500 performed the worst in the test".

This report is what motivated us to reconsider our daughters driving our old 2008 Fit, as this report applies to older Fit's, not the new 2015 model, which Honda expects to ace the small-overlap front-crash test.

 

What......

 

sounds like you should decide yourself. If you need the latest and greatest in air bag/safety technology why let something so worthless as money stop you. it's just money. it can always be replaced.

older suvs might perform just as poorly in the new crash test standards as older smaller cars.

as for me, my car has no airbags and is shaped like a ramp but I'm not worried about it because I don't have any distractions and I drive safe and aware. and also it's agile. and when you step on the right pedal it goes WHAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa supercharger noises right behind your head.

 

The most important safety feature in a car is the driver. If you really want your loved ones to be safer in the car invest in a safe performance driving school like Skip Barber or Bob Bondurant.

If you're buying a car to "keep someone safe" then you want to put them in a huge, but non-truck-based SUV. Then they will be the hammer and not the nail in a collision. Of course, this also means that you don't care a whit about the poor folks that your loved one plows into!

That being said, I'd have no qualms about any post-2000 vehicle safety-wise. They all have good brakes and reasonably good safety systems. In fact, a person might be a safer driver in a vehicle that doesn't make them seem invincible.

 

The 2008 Fit did not do well in IIHS ratings:
Vehicle details

I'm not sure how it was top pick in the first place seeing as no subcompact from 5-6 years ago did well at all in crash tests.

While I'm not someone who would replace a perfectly functional car just to get a few extra safety features, I understand that some folks just want that peace of mind and are willing and/or able to invest the money in it.

I do worry about when my kids get old enough to drive, but I think I'm more concerned with their driving habits (texting, speeding, etc) more than the vehicle itself as far as their safety is concerned.

 

As we all know, your being a good driver is only half the equation. Yes, good driving habits are critical (like alway's wearing seat belts), but any "edge" you can create could be the difference between surviving or not surviving an accident. In our case, the older Fit was a great car (97,000+ miles when we sold it), and if it was just me, I might have kept it. However, the improvements in the 2015 model were enough for us to make the change. Our daughters both are younger, so their brains frontal lobes are not yet completely formed, so they are probably more easily distracted and impulsive. They do however wear their seat belts, avoid friends who drink (or get high), and drive, and hopefully smart enough to avoid texting while driving. All we can do is hope for the best while providing them with the tools they need to succeed.

 

Agree with safe driving being the number one priority for one's safety. Knowing my wife and the roads she drives around, she'd never speed and be cautious. Even on the local roads we keep seeing accidents at signals and 5-6 years back, I was waiting at a red light when a teen driver came crashing from signal behind me trying to beat his signal change and rear-ended this very same civic that I have. I actually hit the car in front of me a little bit due to impact. Thankfully only minor damage to Civic but his car was totaled. That does mean Civic is pretty well built. However now that there is a loved one in back seat, I just wonder if extra airbags etc. in new FIT would be worth over previous generation Civic. Given that I keep cars for a decade, cost isn't issue but my wife only wants a small car. I know new Civic is another option but I was considering utility of FIT as well.

 

Consumer Reports is a fickle mistress. The car she praised to the heavens is suddenly deficient because it failed a new test specifically designed to cause a high failure rate.

The IIHS doesn't get much attention when most every car is scoring their highest rating, so they find a way to raise the bar and therefore fail a few cars. Eventually they'll be failing cars for not withstanding their new "long steel spike through the windshield" test.

Consumer Reports saw the opportunity to get some free advertising so they cranked out a couple of press releases that imply that the Fit and other cars are unsafe. The cars didn't change, they just didn't withstand a test specifically designed to make them fail. Consumer Reports is pretty good at this, having gotten away with their biased testing of the Suzuki Samurai and Isuzu Trooper.

Properly buckled in a car seat, the side air bags in the Fit would not even touch the child, if that is what you mean. Of course they would benefit adult passengers.

 

Yeah small-frontal offset is a new test that a lot of cars, including mid-size SUVs don't do well in (and even fail outright). Car makers haven't yet fully adjusted their crash designs to always account for these violent impacts.

 

"The IIHS doesn't get much attention when most every car is scoring their highest rating, so they find a way to raise the bar and therefore fail a few cars. Eventually they'll be failing cars for not withstanding their new "long steel spike through the windshield" test".

The IIHS designed the test to more accurately reflect accidents people actually have. Most people do not hit "head on", but "clip" a tree or other stationary object. This is what the newer tests are designed to reflect. Thank god they do this, and force the issue to the forefront. When people start "hitting long steel spikes through the windshield", on a regular basis, I'm sure they will add this test as well (although I'm certain we can all figure out the results without going that far).

Much as they do with refrigerators, washing machines and the like, Consumer Reports puts products through the ringer and determines what their actual capabilities (or shortcomings) are. Whirlpool might tell you that their refrigerators provide even and consistent cooling, and all Consumer Reports does is say, "ok, let's place temperature settings all over your product and find out if what your saying is true". To my mind, this is a welcome service.

 

If your daughters are both old enough to drive....they shouldn't have issues with being distracted while behind the wheel of a 2.5k lb weapon.

 

Actually, when it suits their purposes, they will go far beyond "putting products through the wringer." Don't believe me? Watch this footage, shot by Consumer's Reports, illustrating their repeated attempts to get a Suzuki Samurai to tip up. They had to alter their test procedure, increase the speeds, and use multiple drivers until one could find the right combination of violent steering inputs to make the car lift a wheel. Listen to the CU employees gleefully cheer when they finally were successful after more than 50 runs! CU then called a press conference and stated that the vehicle would tip even in benign maneuvers!

Coincidentally, they had just broken ground on a new $15 million facility that they had to pay for. Basically, they denied all of us the opportunity to own an excellent and useful vehicle in order to line their own pockets.

CU finally admitted that they "never intended to imply that the Samurai easily rolls over in routine driving conditions." but it was too little, too late.