Certainly not the right car for everybody all the time, but for people who live in cities or congested areas, and who don't have families (i.e. young urbanites), not a bad option. As far as safety goes, I'll put my money on it, it was engineered by Mercedes, not exactly slouches in the safety engineering department if memory serves me right. A good example would be during the original introduction when the car was a joint project between SMART and Mercedes, and they had the infamous "Moose Test" incident. Instead of trying to sweep it under the rug, or poo-poo it like some big car companies, Mercedes/SMART came to my former employer (Bosch), and retrofitted every single car with Bosch's Electronic Stability System as well as re-engineering the whole suspension package to give it a wider, lower stance. Not exactly a cheap "fix-it" when you consider they were ramping up into high volume production. And, as far as the passenger area, it is a rigid cell designed to meet the same impact safety standards as a Mercedes S-Class (i.e. TANK!) The one area of concern is that it doesn't have "crumple zones", but relies on the crumple zones of other vehicles to absorb the energy of the impact, as well as a slew of airbags. But, crumple zone or not, I'm willing to bet that whatever hits one of these is not going to get into the passenger compartment!
