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A small 2009 car demolishes a 1959 Chevy in a crash test [video]

174 points by Bud 11y ago

carsongross 11y ago
This is certainly dramatic, but it is important to realize that the majority of automobile safety improvements came before 1960: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States#/media/File:USA_annual_VMT_vs_deaths_per_VMT.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... We've become increasingly safety obsessed and jammed more and more expensive and heavy safety technology into vehicles as the returns have diminished dramatically. This is one reason why automobiles all look the same these days, with gigantic A-pillars, obscured windows views necessitating integrated cameras, and the universal "fat american" bulging sides appearance.
- jff 11y ago
  Visibility has really taken a nosedive. Over the last few years I've daily driven a 1962 Studebaker and a 1986 Ford Crown Victoria and both of them had incredible visibility compared to almost any car on the road today. Parallel parking was incredibly easy in the Studebaker especially, because you could actually see the back end of the car out the (massive) rear window.
  - Aloha 11y ago
    Window size has been noticeably reduced because of rollover safety requirements, and better aerodynamics. I have a 2011 Crown Victoria - which compared to a 2011 Charger is night and day difference.
    - madengr 11y ago
      I assume that's why, at 6'5", I can't see out the damn windshield anymore. I'm looking straight into the visor,and rear view mirrors keep getting lower. It's all really frustrating.
      - bkjelden 11y ago
        Another issue is that sweeping, curvy rooflines are in style right now. I'm 6'2" and I find that in a lot of newer cars I can barely fit in the drivers seat. If you're looking at midsize sedans, FWIW, I found the Honda Accord and the Subaru Legacy to have the best headroom.
        Someone1234 11y ago
        Agreed on the Legacy and Accord. It should be noted however that there are two kinds of tall people: Those who are tall in the torso and those who are tall in the legs (and both). People should figure out which one they are when looking at vehicles. A vehicle with a lot of headroom won't do you any good if it is all in your legs. As a resource for finding a vehicle which fits you... Go to edmunds.com (or Google site:edmunds.com [vehicle] [year]), find the vehicle you're interested in, click "Features & Specs" then scroll down to "Interior Measurements." Of particular interest are "FRONT HEAD ROOM" and "FRONT LEG ROOM." I recommend edmunds simply because they list these in one consistent easy to find format. A lot of vehicle manufacturers don't list these metrics at all on the specs page, you have to dive in a brochure to find it.
      - roflchoppa 11y ago
        You gotta lay back super far, that's my secret. I was driving a e30 m3 the other day and was amazed on how much view the driver gets, it's like being in a fish bowl.
        madengr 11y ago
        Yes, lay back. When I rent at the airport, I always try to get a VW Bug as they have decent visibility. VW has seats that adjust pretty low, then push it all the way back, and I'm good. That's fine if it were just me, but my kids could never fit behind me. Used to have a VW Corrado when I was young and single, and that was a good car for tall people, as long as you didn't need the back seat. Next vehicle will be either a Tesla Model 3 (assuming they well be roomier with lack of engine) or a Mercedes Sprinter van. The later has good visibility and I can sit straight, which is good as my back is giving me trouble; I hate stooping to wiggle into cars.
    - mturmon 11y ago
      Quite true. Also, crammed into those A, B, and C pillars, and the trims above them, can be air bags. This also increases the cross section.
  - jweir 11y ago
    This has also increased pedestrian accidents. With the increased width of the frame pedestrians are obscured when making left hand turns. 'Why Left Turns Are So Deadly' http://www.wnyc.org/story/left-turns/ http://www.wnyc.org/story/left-turns/ > "When we compare the data, we find that drivers could see more outside their vehicles in the 1980s than they can now," Dr. Matthew Reed, a research professor with the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, said.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  The improvements look pretty constant to me, an improvement of 20% per decade or so. A log scale would be more appropriate here.
- digitalneal 11y ago
  Customers gotta be alive to buy again. Its just good for business.
- TillE 11y ago
  According to that graph, fatalities per mile were halved from 1970 to 2000. That's not a small thing!
  - rdl 11y ago
    Way better medical care has to be part of that, too. Same with gunshot wounds -- in a lot of places, something which was 90% very negative patient outcome 30 years ago is 50+% survivable now, due to faster EMS, understanding of golden hour, and great trauma intervention.
  - nucleardog 11y ago
    Just being nitpicky, but halved from what to what? If we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on more air bags and other crash engineering but only halved the number deaths from 50 to 25, it's probably not worth it...
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Deaths per year in the US went from 53,000 in 1970 to 42,000 in 2000 despite a big increase in population and an even bigger increase in driving rates. The current number is about 33,000/year, which makes it still one of the top killers of young people.
    - vkou 11y ago
      If "Only" saving 25,000 people a year is not enough to get you excited, I have to ask if there is any human endeavor that you would consider to be worthwhile.
- Amorymeltzer 11y ago
  I won't disagree with your final sentence, but >increasingly safety obsessed and jammed more and more expensive and heavy safety technology Is not a bad thing. Deaths from driving are bad and we should try and reduce them, whether via legal, social, or engineering means. To say the returns are diminishing says more about how little people drove in the past and how horrifically dangerous driving was.
- mikeash 11y ago
  A linear scale for a graph like that is terribly misleading. The graph looks almost flat lately, but that's just because it's relatively near zero. Blow that section up to give it some vertical room and it will tell a different story. Edit: just to put some actual numbers on this, Wikipedia says that deaths per 100 million vehicle miles in the US was 1.07 in 2014, and 1.44 in 2004. That's an improvement of 25% in just the past ten years. You only have to go back 25 years to reach a fatality rate double that of 2014.
  - carsongross 11y ago
    Yes, I acknowledge that, but it's important to bear in mind that costs for improvements are typically linear (or super-linear) so the cost/benefit of more safety has increased markedly. I didn't expect my comment to provoke such a tremendous backlash.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Sure, all the low-hanging fruit is gone. It's a lot easier and cheaper to cut fatalities by X% by installing three-point seat belts in every car than it is to do it by building advanced stability control systems. But still, the returns are still significant and the dangers are still huge. I'd guess that your tremendous backlash comes from using a deeply misleading graph as the foundation of your comment and from the strong implication that additional safety improvements are no longer worthwhile.
      - carsongross 11y ago
        And that's where I would disagree with what is obviously an overwhelming majority: I don't think the returns, compared to costs, are significant and I don't think that the dangers are still huge. Modern cars are very, very safe and have been for years, and I think the industry should begin to prioritize other things (costs, simplicity, aesthetics, etc.) in some cases. I would be less obstinate if much of the safety equipment was optional, rather than required by law. OTOH, given the absolute blow out that this comment took, I can see that mine is not a popular position. And I would be lying if I didn't admit that a lot of my animus comes from the fact that the vehicles I prefer (the 70-series landcruiser, the Defender 90) are not available in the U.S. due to safety restrictions.
- codingdave 11y ago
  > as the returns have diminished dramatically. I think every person who lives because of those diminishing returns is grateful for any progress made.
  - bdamm 11y ago
    At the very least it's given American cars a chance at being family cars. For a while it really looked like Volvo was set to dominate that market.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  > This is certainly dramatic, but it is important to realize that the majority of automobile safety improvements came before 1960 Uhh what? Incorrect. In 1960, 20.147 per 100K population died, in 2013 10.345 per 100k population died. Approximately a 50% decline (9.802 actual) between the two periods. In 1937, 29.357 per 100K population died, in 1960 20.147 per 100K population died. Approximately a 32% decline (9.21 actual) between the two periods. So both as a % and in literal terms the delta between 1960 and today is greater than the difference between the worst year (1937) and 1960. > We've become increasingly safety obsessed and jammed more and more expensive and heavy safety technology into vehicles as the returns have diminished dramatically. But yet vehicles are lighter and cheaper today than they were in 1960 (adjusting for inflation). So even if this safety technology is increasing both price and weight (and I agree that it does), we're still in a very good place. While reduction in deaths has slowed in the last ten years, we're just on the brink of moving into automated safety systems (e.g. auto-breaking) that will likely move things forward yet again.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Measuring automobile deaths per population is highly uninformative, because of the massive difference in exposure over time. People were driving way more in 1960 than 1937. If safety were constant, you'd expect the fatalities per population to also go way up. Fatalities per vehicle mile or passenger mile, while still not telling the whole story, is a much better measure.
    - Someone1234 11y ago
      > Fatalities per vehicle mile or passenger mile, while still not telling the whole story, is a much better measure. And says the same thing, that safety has continued to improve dramatically since 1960. But fundamentally if population bound statistics are unfair in one direction, miles driven statistics are unfair in the opposite. I picked the statistic which actually makes it hardest to prove my point, and still proved my point. If I used miles driven I'd prove my point even harder.
      - 11y ago
- mywittyname 11y ago
  > important to realize that the majority of automobile safety improvements came before 1960: This is an absurdly false claim. Cars in the 60s had bias ply tires (which blew out frequently and had no traction), drum brakes (awful), single circuit brake systems that would fail if there was a leak, solid rear axles (tail happy), lap belts (if anything). Old cars were several orders of magnitude more difficult and dangerous to drive. Airbags, ABS, crumple zones, traction/stability control, and radial tires have all massively improved the safety of driving. Car safety has improved so much in the past 10 years that the NHSTA and IIHS have needed to make their tests more stringent because so many cars were getting perfect scores. A ten year old Camry would have a perfect score in 2006, but would likely fail a 2016 crash test.
  - ars 11y ago
    > drum brakes (awful) What's so bad about drum brakes? I know they are more involved to work on, and have more parts. But as far as safety, aren't they easier to activate, which is important if you don't have power assist brakes? (Say engine dies, so just didn't come with power brakes.)
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Worse cooling and worse behavior when hot mean that it's much easier to overheat them and experience brake fade compared to disc brakes.
    - mywittyname 11y ago
      You are correct, that's why they were originally used, but that's the only advantage they have over discs. Drums don't stop very well. There isn't much surface area for friction and they suffer from brake fade (overheating causing a reduction in braking capability).
      - carsongross 11y ago
        I dunno, man. My 4000 pound '85 land cruiser stops fine with the drums. And Toyota still runs drums on the rear of Tacomas. Discs are probably better, but I don't think the safety gains for them are that significant.
Amorymeltzer 11y ago
My wife and I recently finished an introductory auto mechanics class — which was an incredibly fun time and an excellent experience — and one of the recurring themes of the class was just how miserable, unreliable, and dangerous cars were ~50 years ago. This video is a good example of that; it's not just mileage or seat belts or airbags, it's everything from tires to engines to brakes.
- chiph 11y ago
  Growing up, we had a late 60's Dodge station wagon. It was pretty much the definition of "unsafe" - the interior was made of hard metal surfaces, loose steering & suspension, and no crash engineering at all. But it was the first family car that came with disc brakes, and that's why Dad bought it. Later, they bought a mid 80's Pontiac 6000, and while it had disc brakes, GM hadn't increased the size of the brake rotors to accommodate the change from asbestos brake pad material, so it had huge brake fade and panic stops really did result in driver panic. Not a fun car to drive.
  - alistairSH 11y ago
    My first car was a Pontiac 6000. God, it was awful. But, it was a station wagon, so at least I could pile a bunch of friends in the back.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Wish I could find an adult intro to auto mechanics class around here. That would be massively useful for everyone to learn but it seems like all anyone who already knows basic auto repair says is "YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT?!" with a sarcastic condescending tone, and I guess that attitude filters down to lack of education since it is obvious or whatever. But on the positive note there is a 101 to gun safety class every two city blocks so I have that going for me...
  - wmeredith 11y ago
    Find your local community or technical college.
jedberg 11y ago
I like how they added the detail of the fuzzy dice for the older car.
stonogo 11y ago
When you start describing midsize family sedans as 'small cars' you cross the line into clickbait.
- madengr 11y ago
  Midsize family sedans have absurdly small interiors these days. Maybe it's the horribly large dash boards, but they just have no room. I hate them.
  - mywittyname 11y ago
    The Malibu is quite big on the inside. I owed an Aura (same platform) and there was enough room in the back that they could have easily had reclining rear seats. It had a good 28' of leg room with me driving.
  - csours 11y ago
    A lot of space is used up on safety equipment. As one small example A-Pillars (at the edges of the windshield) are very large to incorporate the safety cage, rollover protection, and airbags. [1] This leads to a weird problem where the car is very safe in a crash, but slightly more likely to get in an accident due to visibility issues. There are existing lane change warning systems for rear visibility, I expect there will soon be forward sensing systems as well; and of course SDCs are coming as well. Seats also take up a significant amount of room - partly to safety considerations, but also a bit to lazy design. 1. http://wardsauto.com/news-analysis/new-pillars-enhance-safety-impede-visibility http://wardsauto.com/news-analysis/new-pillars-enhance-safet...
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted. The malibu is certainly not a small car.
- ptaipale 11y ago
  You assessment is perhaps a bit harsh, but I don't think it deserves the downvotes. The Chevy Malibu is not a small car. In Europe the design was sold as Opel Vectra/Signum which was actually a "large family car" by European standards. It's the largest sedan that GM sold under the European Opel/Vauxhall badges; to get a bigger car, you got a minivan.
padobson 11y ago
So in 50 years we've traveled light years in safety, but only about thirty miles in naming conventions[1]. [1]https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Bel+Air,+Los+Angeles,+CA/Malibu,+CA/@34.0924988,-118.7482466,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2bd196c4ef2fb:0xe451252bd7d4d458!2m2!1d-118.459463!2d34.1002455!1m5!1m1!1s0x80e81da9f908d63f:0x93b72d71b2ea8c5a!2m2!1d-118.7797571!2d34.0259216 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Bel+Air,+Los+Angeles,+CA/Mal...
- mikeash 11y ago
  The Malibu name is already over 50 years old, actually. It would have been amusing to redo this test with two Malibus.
dshibarshin 11y ago
Reminds me of the classic Chevrolet Corvairs which were equipped with a single-piece steering column that could impale the driver in a head-on collision.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  Was by no means confined to the Corvair. Early Mustangs (65-most of 67) had non-collapsible steering columns (and 65s didn't come with even lap belts standard [federal mandate in 66]). 65s also had single-circuit brakes, meaning the leak of just one wheel cylinder (not entirely uncommon) could render the entire braking system inoperative, leaving you heading towards a collision with no brakes, a one-piece "Spear-o-matic" steering column and no lap belts. Ugly, so two of the first mods I did to my '65 were dual-circuit braking system and lap belts. (The steering column change is unfortunately quite involved.)
  - onre 11y ago
    Basically everything pre-mid-'60s had this.
    - masklinn 11y ago
      IIRC it was also common for the engine to follow the steering column into the passenger compartment to polish off the driver and break the passenger's legs in case they hadn't been maimed yet.
humble_dev 11y ago
I wish that that someone did some tests between old and new software, I bet uptime of old software/hardware would be higher than our current tech stack.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Who needs lots of uptime when we are rewriting everything constantly with this week's favorite framework?
- _yosefk 11y ago
  I don't know about uptime, but most of the new programming languages have no undefined behavior (a Java program always behaves as a Java program whatever your bugs are), while most of the old languages do have undefined behavior (even Ada has garbage-initialized variables.) Hardware-wise, there's memory protection and virtualization, whereas old Unix, Windows, etc. all let you crap all over any piece of memory because there was no efficient way to prevent arbitrary machine code from doing that. Security also improved tremendously, in relative terms. So we're far from unhackable, never-crashing software, but then cars, too are still relatively dangerous, just much less so than they used to be. (Now one interesting thing that I wonder about, though, with all those thank yous going out to the government, Ralph Nader and other deities in sibling comments, is just how reliable this crash test is; meaning, what happens if you try other angles, which are not in the standard test.)
  - DerekL 11y ago
    >I don't know about uptime, but most of the new programming languages have no undefined behavior (a Java program always behaves as a Java program whatever your bugs are), while most of the old languages do have undefined behavior (even Ada has garbage-initialized variables.) BTW, Java does have implementation-defined or unspecified behavior (for instance, using the same objects from different threads without proper coordination), but there's much less of it and it's easier to avoid.
    - _yosefk 11y ago
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
They sure don't make 'em like they used to.
- wmeredith 11y ago
  Thank god.
  - aaronbrethorst 11y ago
    Thank the federal government.
    - csours 11y ago
      And Ralph Nader.
    - Semiapies 11y ago
      Thank the IIHS and other groups.
    - baddox 11y ago
      Did the federal government invent any safety features, or did they just mandate them once car manufacturers invented them?
      - aaronbrethorst 11y ago
        That's some serious revisionist history, right there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#Industry_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#Industry_r...
        baddox 11y ago
        It was a question. I actually don't know.
        baddox 11y ago
        The section you linked to doesn't seem to say anything about who invented various automobile safety mechanisms.
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fastaguy88 11y ago
To add a personal perspective, when I got my first car in 1970, there were about 50,000 deaths per year for 200 million people. We were driving 75 - 80 on the interstates in the midwest on bias-ply tires with drum brakes and solid rear axles. Despite more than a 50% increase in population, total fatalities are under 35K/year, and trending down. By 2013 (the last year in wikipedia), the fatality rate was 2.5X lower than 45 years earlier.
- zokier 11y ago
  I suspect the number of cars (per capita) has dramatically increased too, hilighting the improved safety even more.
alvern 11y ago
There is a whole car-culture set around rebuilding these cars to factory spec, but there was a reason people were putting disc brakes from a '75 in a '56. Dual brake (front & rear) was not a mandatory thing until '69.
ljk 11y ago
Stupid question: where do they get the 1959 vehicle for these tests? Is it just an old one laying around somewhere?
- bdamm 11y ago
  It's probably a project car from someone who loves immaculate interiors but has some serious engine trouble. Just guessing. There's a complete working model for sale right now for $39,000.
- Sanddancer 11y ago
  They bought it off a classified ad. The guy they bought it from was pissed when he found out what they did. [1] [1] http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-an-x-ray-look-at-gms-x-frame-1957-1970/ http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automoti... Search for "Jim Snell"
biot 11y ago
If you saw this video almost 7 years ago there's really nothing new here. At the risk of being redundant, it should have "[2009]" in the title. Here's an article from 2009 with aftermath pics, etc. showing the difference in occupant protection: http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/26/pics-aplenty-iihs-reveals-before-and-after-of-malibu-bel-air-cr/ http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/26/pics-aplenty-iihs-reveals...
- sosuke 11y ago
  "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Insurance Institute For Highway Safety." No one is safe from link rot.
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rileymat2 11y ago
I do not doubt the premise of the video, but there appears to be a large rust cloud on impact. Did they use a structurally sound old car or did they help prove their point by using a rusted out car?
- biot 11y ago
  You're seeing the paint (of each car's color) being atomized upon impact.
- alricb 11y ago
  IIRC the dust is from red clay that accumulated under the car, not rust.
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Animats 11y ago
Your tax dollars at work. The auto industry fought most of the improvements that make that safety improvement possible. They fought seat belts. They fought air bags. They fought crumple zones. They lost. Except Volvo, which was usually ahead of regulations on safety. They had each of those things before they were mandated. Volvo's CEO has announced that they want to eliminate all deaths in Volvo cars by 2020. He also says that if a self-driving car has an accident, it's the manufacturer's fault and the manufacturer's financial responsibility.
- Kluny 11y ago
  I was told this story by a car nerd friend, and I won't guarantee its accuracy (feel free to confirm or deny if you have more information.) When Volvo began making cars, they were very beautiful, artistically designed instant classics, like this one: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/99/b5/39/99b539384b296fa63a99d0f7c010ab03.jpg https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/99/b5/39/99b539384... The founder of the company was passionate about making and driving beautiful cars, and he succeeded and built a pretty impressive company on that. However, he didn't pay much attention to safety, and died in a car wreck. His wife inherited the company, and instead of selling off the assets and retiring, decided to take the helm and begin producing the safest cars possible. Ever since, they've been on the leading edge of safety development. The cars weren't quite as pretty, but they didn't kill as many people. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/1988-1991_Volvo_240_GL_station_wagon_%282011-06-15%29_01.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/1988-199...
  - onre 11y ago
    Not true, neither of the founders died in a car accident. Volvo had a very strong safety emphasis already in the '50s, introducing many firsts in the automotive safety field. In that decade they introduced shoulder belts as a world first and padded dashboard as an European first (Tucker had this already in '40s but only 51 cars were ever made).
    - masklinn 11y ago
ars 11y ago
Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U
rayiner 11y ago
If car safety stayed at 1960 levels, there would be about 60,000 car deaths per year. Valuing a human life at about $5 million, those 30,000 extra deaths would have an economic cost of $150 billion per year.
- mikeash 11y ago
  It would be a lot worse than that, actually. In 1960 there were about 720 billion vehicle miles traveled in the US, and these days it's about 3 trillion, an increase of a bit over 4x. In 1960 there were about 36,000 traffic fatalities, so given a bit over 4x exposure you'd see about 150,000 traffic fatalities per year today. That's about 120,000 or $600 billion.
  - rfrey 11y ago
    Even that might be conservative, since it seems reasonable that deaths would increase more than linearly with increased highway traffic density.
cjensen 11y ago
It looks to me like Consumer Reports did an awful lot of cherry-picking of the data in that video. First, it looks to me like they made the collision happen at the max speed the Malibu could tolerate without collapsing the Malibu's passenger compartment. A slower collision might have been less catastrophic to the antique. A higher speed might have been catastrophic to the Malibu. Second, they picked an old car built before seatbelt introduction and emphasized that aspect. Third, they picked an accident type -- frontal offset -- which recent modern cars have been specifically engineered to handle. Fourth, note how carefully the video is edited so that you cannot see the right side of the antique post-crash either overhead or from the side. The editors didn't want to show anything that would detract from their chosen message. Modern cars really are a lot safer and way more reliable than cars when I was a kid, and I'm grateful for it. When my wife got pregnant, the first thing I did was sell my 69 Chevy Nova because I felt that to be responsible for my child, I needed to take care of my life by driving a safer car. All that said, it irks me that Consumer Reports treated the production and editing of this film as a propaganda exercise instead of a straight-up tell-the-facts documentary.
- Aloha 11y ago
  It's also a surprisingly common accident type, and the speeds picked are typical for this accident type too - you may not see it because you live in a city, but in rural places with lots of two-lane roads its surprisingly common for a high-speed frontal offset collision to happen.
- robwilliams 11y ago
  >Second, they picked an old car built before seatbelt introduction and emphasized that aspect. How is that cherry picking? Seat belts are a huge safety improvement and it's a difference that applies to all old/new car comparisons, not just the specific old car they chose. >Third, they picked an accident type -- frontal offset -- which recent modern cars have been specifically engineered to handle. Why do you think they were specifically engineered to handle those accident types? They must be common enough to warrant the engineering expense to protect against it.
- rtkwe 11y ago
  1) All the tests they do happen at a defined speed, for the front overlap it's 40 MPH [1] which it looks like the video was doing. Can't really fault them for using their standard tests. 2) It was to show how much better cars have gotten in the 50 years (1959 to 2009 when the video was produced) seat belts didn't even appear as a standard fitting on a car until 1958 on a Saab. 3) New cars are engineered to handle all the types of crashes that the IIHS tests for. I don't see your point. 4) The newer car had basically no damage on the opposite side and I doubt the older car did better than the 2009. It's not shocking at all that the non involved side of the car wouldn't take much damage. They don't even track the movement on that side of the car during their tests. [1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/frontal-crash-tests http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/frontal-crash-...
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
Old people: "They sure don't make 'em like they used to!" Me: Thank goodness.
BuckRogers 11y ago
There's a lot of obsession with head-on collisions in regards to safety but there are two things commonly forgotten about. The ability to stop quickly and rollover risk. I've always felt a large family sedan like a Ford Taurus was probably the overall safest thing you could drive. Decent stopping distance, low rollover risk and lots of crush zone room for modern engineering to absorb impact.
- WWLink 11y ago
  A fully loaded Taurus has all of the safety features (except I'm not sure it has forward collision warning? I think it does) It's also based on a Volvo platform. And very comfortable. XD I have no idea why nobody likes them, but they are awesome 2nd owner cars.
superuser2 11y ago
We've made enormous progress in holding up under collision, but giant steps back in collision avoidance. I remember around 5 years ago seeing a concept for the "car of the future" as basically a glass box optimizing visibility. In fact we've done the opposite: high beltlines, low and elongated roofs, rear visibility and rear side windows approaching zero. Volkswagen makes just about the only high-quality compact in the neighborhood of $20k that you can actually see out of. Mazda3, Prius, Elantra, etc. are seemingly part of a concerted effort to make the greatest amount of damage possible to the driver's situational awareness. Why? Just so they can sell you the blindspot monitoring options?

174 points by Bud 11y ago

This is certainly dramatic, but it is important to realize that the majority of automobile safety improvements came before 1960: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States#/media/File:USA_annual_VMT_vs_deaths_per_VMT.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... We've become increasingly safety obsessed and jammed more and more expensive and heavy safety technology into vehicles as the returns have diminished dramatically. This is one reason why automobiles all look the same these days, with gigantic A-pillars, obscured windows views necessitating integrated cameras, and the universal "fat american" bulging sides appearance.

jff 11y ago
Visibility has really taken a nosedive. Over the last few years I've daily driven a 1962 Studebaker and a 1986 Ford Crown Victoria and both of them had incredible visibility compared to almost any car on the road today. Parallel parking was incredibly easy in the Studebaker especially, because you could actually see the back end of the car out the (massive) rear window.
- Aloha 11y ago
  Window size has been noticeably reduced because of rollover safety requirements, and better aerodynamics. I have a 2011 Crown Victoria - which compared to a 2011 Charger is night and day difference.
  - madengr 11y ago
    I assume that's why, at 6'5", I can't see out the damn windshield anymore. I'm looking straight into the visor,and rear view mirrors keep getting lower. It's all really frustrating.
    - bkjelden 11y ago
      Another issue is that sweeping, curvy rooflines are in style right now. I'm 6'2" and I find that in a lot of newer cars I can barely fit in the drivers seat. If you're looking at midsize sedans, FWIW, I found the Honda Accord and the Subaru Legacy to have the best headroom.
      - Someone1234 11y ago
        Agreed on the Legacy and Accord. It should be noted however that there are two kinds of tall people: Those who are tall in the torso and those who are tall in the legs (and both). People should figure out which one they are when looking at vehicles. A vehicle with a lot of headroom won't do you any good if it is all in your legs. As a resource for finding a vehicle which fits you... Go to edmunds.com (or Google site:edmunds.com [vehicle] [year]), find the vehicle you're interested in, click "Features & Specs" then scroll down to "Interior Measurements." Of particular interest are "FRONT HEAD ROOM" and "FRONT LEG ROOM." I recommend edmunds simply because they list these in one consistent easy to find format. A lot of vehicle manufacturers don't list these metrics at all on the specs page, you have to dive in a brochure to find it.
    - roflchoppa 11y ago
      You gotta lay back super far, that's my secret. I was driving a e30 m3 the other day and was amazed on how much view the driver gets, it's like being in a fish bowl.
      - madengr 11y ago
        Yes, lay back. When I rent at the airport, I always try to get a VW Bug as they have decent visibility. VW has seats that adjust pretty low, then push it all the way back, and I'm good. That's fine if it were just me, but my kids could never fit behind me. Used to have a VW Corrado when I was young and single, and that was a good car for tall people, as long as you didn't need the back seat. Next vehicle will be either a Tesla Model 3 (assuming they well be roomier with lack of engine) or a Mercedes Sprinter van. The later has good visibility and I can sit straight, which is good as my back is giving me trouble; I hate stooping to wiggle into cars.
  - mturmon 11y ago
    Quite true. Also, crammed into those A, B, and C pillars, and the trims above them, can be air bags. This also increases the cross section.
- jweir 11y ago
  This has also increased pedestrian accidents. With the increased width of the frame pedestrians are obscured when making left hand turns. 'Why Left Turns Are So Deadly' http://www.wnyc.org/story/left-turns/ http://www.wnyc.org/story/left-turns/ > "When we compare the data, we find that drivers could see more outside their vehicles in the 1980s than they can now," Dr. Matthew Reed, a research professor with the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, said.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
The improvements look pretty constant to me, an improvement of 20% per decade or so. A log scale would be more appropriate here.
digitalneal 11y ago
Customers gotta be alive to buy again. Its just good for business.
TillE 11y ago
According to that graph, fatalities per mile were halved from 1970 to 2000. That's not a small thing!
- rdl 11y ago
  Way better medical care has to be part of that, too. Same with gunshot wounds -- in a lot of places, something which was 90% very negative patient outcome 30 years ago is 50+% survivable now, due to faster EMS, understanding of golden hour, and great trauma intervention.
- nucleardog 11y ago
  Just being nitpicky, but halved from what to what? If we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on more air bags and other crash engineering but only halved the number deaths from 50 to 25, it's probably not worth it...
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Deaths per year in the US went from 53,000 in 1970 to 42,000 in 2000 despite a big increase in population and an even bigger increase in driving rates. The current number is about 33,000/year, which makes it still one of the top killers of young people.
  - vkou 11y ago
    If "Only" saving 25,000 people a year is not enough to get you excited, I have to ask if there is any human endeavor that you would consider to be worthwhile.
Amorymeltzer 11y ago
I won't disagree with your final sentence, but >increasingly safety obsessed and jammed more and more expensive and heavy safety technology Is not a bad thing. Deaths from driving are bad and we should try and reduce them, whether via legal, social, or engineering means. To say the returns are diminishing says more about how little people drove in the past and how horrifically dangerous driving was.
mikeash 11y ago
A linear scale for a graph like that is terribly misleading. The graph looks almost flat lately, but that's just because it's relatively near zero. Blow that section up to give it some vertical room and it will tell a different story. Edit: just to put some actual numbers on this, Wikipedia says that deaths per 100 million vehicle miles in the US was 1.07 in 2014, and 1.44 in 2004. That's an improvement of 25% in just the past ten years. You only have to go back 25 years to reach a fatality rate double that of 2014.
- carsongross 11y ago
  Yes, I acknowledge that, but it's important to bear in mind that costs for improvements are typically linear (or super-linear) so the cost/benefit of more safety has increased markedly. I didn't expect my comment to provoke such a tremendous backlash.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Sure, all the low-hanging fruit is gone. It's a lot easier and cheaper to cut fatalities by X% by installing three-point seat belts in every car than it is to do it by building advanced stability control systems. But still, the returns are still significant and the dangers are still huge. I'd guess that your tremendous backlash comes from using a deeply misleading graph as the foundation of your comment and from the strong implication that additional safety improvements are no longer worthwhile.
    - carsongross 11y ago
      And that's where I would disagree with what is obviously an overwhelming majority: I don't think the returns, compared to costs, are significant and I don't think that the dangers are still huge. Modern cars are very, very safe and have been for years, and I think the industry should begin to prioritize other things (costs, simplicity, aesthetics, etc.) in some cases. I would be less obstinate if much of the safety equipment was optional, rather than required by law. OTOH, given the absolute blow out that this comment took, I can see that mine is not a popular position. And I would be lying if I didn't admit that a lot of my animus comes from the fact that the vehicles I prefer (the 70-series landcruiser, the Defender 90) are not available in the U.S. due to safety restrictions.
codingdave 11y ago
> as the returns have diminished dramatically. I think every person who lives because of those diminishing returns is grateful for any progress made.
- bdamm 11y ago
  At the very least it's given American cars a chance at being family cars. For a while it really looked like Volvo was set to dominate that market.
Someone1234 11y ago
> This is certainly dramatic, but it is important to realize that the majority of automobile safety improvements came before 1960 Uhh what? Incorrect. In 1960, 20.147 per 100K population died, in 2013 10.345 per 100k population died. Approximately a 50% decline (9.802 actual) between the two periods. In 1937, 29.357 per 100K population died, in 1960 20.147 per 100K population died. Approximately a 32% decline (9.21 actual) between the two periods. So both as a % and in literal terms the delta between 1960 and today is greater than the difference between the worst year (1937) and 1960. > We've become increasingly safety obsessed and jammed more and more expensive and heavy safety technology into vehicles as the returns have diminished dramatically. But yet vehicles are lighter and cheaper today than they were in 1960 (adjusting for inflation). So even if this safety technology is increasing both price and weight (and I agree that it does), we're still in a very good place. While reduction in deaths has slowed in the last ten years, we're just on the brink of moving into automated safety systems (e.g. auto-breaking) that will likely move things forward yet again.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Measuring automobile deaths per population is highly uninformative, because of the massive difference in exposure over time. People were driving way more in 1960 than 1937. If safety were constant, you'd expect the fatalities per population to also go way up. Fatalities per vehicle mile or passenger mile, while still not telling the whole story, is a much better measure.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    > Fatalities per vehicle mile or passenger mile, while still not telling the whole story, is a much better measure. And says the same thing, that safety has continued to improve dramatically since 1960. But fundamentally if population bound statistics are unfair in one direction, miles driven statistics are unfair in the opposite. I picked the statistic which actually makes it hardest to prove my point, and still proved my point. If I used miles driven I'd prove my point even harder.
    - 11y ago
mywittyname 11y ago
> important to realize that the majority of automobile safety improvements came before 1960: This is an absurdly false claim. Cars in the 60s had bias ply tires (which blew out frequently and had no traction), drum brakes (awful), single circuit brake systems that would fail if there was a leak, solid rear axles (tail happy), lap belts (if anything). Old cars were several orders of magnitude more difficult and dangerous to drive. Airbags, ABS, crumple zones, traction/stability control, and radial tires have all massively improved the safety of driving. Car safety has improved so much in the past 10 years that the NHSTA and IIHS have needed to make their tests more stringent because so many cars were getting perfect scores. A ten year old Camry would have a perfect score in 2006, but would likely fail a 2016 crash test.
- ars 11y ago
  > drum brakes (awful) What's so bad about drum brakes? I know they are more involved to work on, and have more parts. But as far as safety, aren't they easier to activate, which is important if you don't have power assist brakes? (Say engine dies, so just didn't come with power brakes.)
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Worse cooling and worse behavior when hot mean that it's much easier to overheat them and experience brake fade compared to disc brakes.
  - mywittyname 11y ago
    You are correct, that's why they were originally used, but that's the only advantage they have over discs. Drums don't stop very well. There isn't much surface area for friction and they suffer from brake fade (overheating causing a reduction in braking capability).
    - carsongross 11y ago
      I dunno, man. My 4000 pound '85 land cruiser stops fine with the drums. And Toyota still runs drums on the rear of Tacomas. Discs are probably better, but I don't think the safety gains for them are that significant.

Amorymeltzer 11y ago

My wife and I recently finished an introductory auto mechanics class — which was an incredibly fun time and an excellent experience — and one of the recurring themes of the class was just how miserable, unreliable, and dangerous cars were ~50 years ago. This video is a good example of that; it's not just mileage or seat belts or airbags, it's everything from tires to engines to brakes.

chiph 11y ago
Growing up, we had a late 60's Dodge station wagon. It was pretty much the definition of "unsafe" - the interior was made of hard metal surfaces, loose steering & suspension, and no crash engineering at all. But it was the first family car that came with disc brakes, and that's why Dad bought it. Later, they bought a mid 80's Pontiac 6000, and while it had disc brakes, GM hadn't increased the size of the brake rotors to accommodate the change from asbestos brake pad material, so it had huge brake fade and panic stops really did result in driver panic. Not a fun car to drive.
- alistairSH 11y ago
  My first car was a Pontiac 6000. God, it was awful. But, it was a station wagon, so at least I could pile a bunch of friends in the back.
Someone1234 11y ago
Wish I could find an adult intro to auto mechanics class around here. That would be massively useful for everyone to learn but it seems like all anyone who already knows basic auto repair says is "YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT?!" with a sarcastic condescending tone, and I guess that attitude filters down to lack of education since it is obvious or whatever. But on the positive note there is a 101 to gun safety class every two city blocks so I have that going for me...
- wmeredith 11y ago
  Find your local community or technical college.

jedberg 11y ago

I like how they added the detail of the fuzzy dice for the older car.

stonogo 11y ago

When you start describing midsize family sedans as 'small cars' you cross the line into clickbait.

madengr 11y ago
Midsize family sedans have absurdly small interiors these days. Maybe it's the horribly large dash boards, but they just have no room. I hate them.
- mywittyname 11y ago
  The Malibu is quite big on the inside. I owed an Aura (same platform) and there was enough room in the back that they could have easily had reclining rear seats. It had a good 28' of leg room with me driving.
- csours 11y ago
  A lot of space is used up on safety equipment. As one small example A-Pillars (at the edges of the windshield) are very large to incorporate the safety cage, rollover protection, and airbags. [1] This leads to a weird problem where the car is very safe in a crash, but slightly more likely to get in an accident due to visibility issues. There are existing lane change warning systems for rear visibility, I expect there will soon be forward sensing systems as well; and of course SDCs are coming as well. Seats also take up a significant amount of room - partly to safety considerations, but also a bit to lazy design. 1. http://wardsauto.com/news-analysis/new-pillars-enhance-safety-impede-visibility http://wardsauto.com/news-analysis/new-pillars-enhance-safet...
thescriptkiddie 11y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. The malibu is certainly not a small car.
ptaipale 11y ago
You assessment is perhaps a bit harsh, but I don't think it deserves the downvotes. The Chevy Malibu is not a small car. In Europe the design was sold as Opel Vectra/Signum which was actually a "large family car" by European standards. It's the largest sedan that GM sold under the European Opel/Vauxhall badges; to get a bigger car, you got a minivan.

padobson 11y ago

So in 50 years we've traveled light years in safety, but only about thirty miles in naming conventions[1]. [1]https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Bel+Air,+Los+Angeles,+CA/Malibu,+CA/@34.0924988,-118.7482466,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2bd196c4ef2fb:0xe451252bd7d4d458!2m2!1d-118.459463!2d34.1002455!1m5!1m1!1s0x80e81da9f908d63f:0x93b72d71b2ea8c5a!2m2!1d-118.7797571!2d34.0259216 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Bel+Air,+Los+Angeles,+CA/Mal...

mikeash 11y ago
The Malibu name is already over 50 years old, actually. It would have been amusing to redo this test with two Malibus.

dshibarshin 11y ago

Reminds me of the classic Chevrolet Corvairs which were equipped with a single-piece steering column that could impale the driver in a head-on collision.

sokoloff 11y ago
Was by no means confined to the Corvair. Early Mustangs (65-most of 67) had non-collapsible steering columns (and 65s didn't come with even lap belts standard [federal mandate in 66]). 65s also had single-circuit brakes, meaning the leak of just one wheel cylinder (not entirely uncommon) could render the entire braking system inoperative, leaving you heading towards a collision with no brakes, a one-piece "Spear-o-matic" steering column and no lap belts. Ugly, so two of the first mods I did to my '65 were dual-circuit braking system and lap belts. (The steering column change is unfortunately quite involved.)
- onre 11y ago
  Basically everything pre-mid-'60s had this.
  - masklinn 11y ago
    IIRC it was also common for the engine to follow the steering column into the passenger compartment to polish off the driver and break the passenger's legs in case they hadn't been maimed yet.

humble_dev 11y ago

I wish that that someone did some tests between old and new software, I bet uptime of old software/hardware would be higher than our current tech stack.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Who needs lots of uptime when we are rewriting everything constantly with this week's favorite framework?
_yosefk 11y ago
I don't know about uptime, but most of the new programming languages have no undefined behavior (a Java program always behaves as a Java program whatever your bugs are), while most of the old languages do have undefined behavior (even Ada has garbage-initialized variables.) Hardware-wise, there's memory protection and virtualization, whereas old Unix, Windows, etc. all let you crap all over any piece of memory because there was no efficient way to prevent arbitrary machine code from doing that. Security also improved tremendously, in relative terms. So we're far from unhackable, never-crashing software, but then cars, too are still relatively dangerous, just much less so than they used to be. (Now one interesting thing that I wonder about, though, with all those thank yous going out to the government, Ralph Nader and other deities in sibling comments, is just how reliable this crash test is; meaning, what happens if you try other angles, which are not in the standard test.)
- DerekL 11y ago
  >I don't know about uptime, but most of the new programming languages have no undefined behavior (a Java program always behaves as a Java program whatever your bugs are), while most of the old languages do have undefined behavior (even Ada has garbage-initialized variables.) BTW, Java does have implementation-defined or unspecified behavior (for instance, using the same objects from different threads without proper coordination), but there's much less of it and it's easier to avoid.
  - _yosefk 11y ago

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

They sure don't make 'em like they used to.

wmeredith 11y ago
Thank god.
- aaronbrethorst 11y ago
  Thank the federal government.
  - csours 11y ago
    And Ralph Nader.
  - Semiapies 11y ago
    Thank the IIHS and other groups.
  - baddox 11y ago
    Did the federal government invent any safety features, or did they just mandate them once car manufacturers invented them?
    - aaronbrethorst 11y ago
      That's some serious revisionist history, right there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#Industry_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#Industry_r...
      - baddox 11y ago
        It was a question. I actually don't know.
      - baddox 11y ago
        The section you linked to doesn't seem to say anything about who invented various automobile safety mechanisms.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

fastaguy88 11y ago

To add a personal perspective, when I got my first car in 1970, there were about 50,000 deaths per year for 200 million people. We were driving 75 - 80 on the interstates in the midwest on bias-ply tires with drum brakes and solid rear axles. Despite more than a 50% increase in population, total fatalities are under 35K/year, and trending down. By 2013 (the last year in wikipedia), the fatality rate was 2.5X lower than 45 years earlier.

zokier 11y ago
I suspect the number of cars (per capita) has dramatically increased too, hilighting the improved safety even more.

alvern 11y ago

There is a whole car-culture set around rebuilding these cars to factory spec, but there was a reason people were putting disc brakes from a '75 in a '56. Dual brake (front & rear) was not a mandatory thing until '69.

ljk 11y ago

Stupid question: where do they get the 1959 vehicle for these tests? Is it just an old one laying around somewhere?

bdamm 11y ago
It's probably a project car from someone who loves immaculate interiors but has some serious engine trouble. Just guessing. There's a complete working model for sale right now for $39,000.
Sanddancer 11y ago
They bought it off a classified ad. The guy they bought it from was pissed when he found out what they did. [1] [1] http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-an-x-ray-look-at-gms-x-frame-1957-1970/ http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automoti... Search for "Jim Snell"

biot 11y ago

If you saw this video almost 7 years ago there's really nothing new here. At the risk of being redundant, it should have "[2009]" in the title. Here's an article from 2009 with aftermath pics, etc. showing the difference in occupant protection: http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/26/pics-aplenty-iihs-reveals-before-and-after-of-malibu-bel-air-cr/ http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/26/pics-aplenty-iihs-reveals...

sosuke 11y ago
"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Insurance Institute For Highway Safety." No one is safe from link rot.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

rileymat2 11y ago

I do not doubt the premise of the video, but there appears to be a large rust cloud on impact. Did they use a structurally sound old car or did they help prove their point by using a rusted out car?

biot 11y ago
You're seeing the paint (of each car's color) being atomized upon impact.
alricb 11y ago
IIRC the dust is from red clay that accumulated under the car, not rust.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Animats 11y ago

Your tax dollars at work. The auto industry fought most of the improvements that make that safety improvement possible. They fought seat belts. They fought air bags. They fought crumple zones. They lost. Except Volvo, which was usually ahead of regulations on safety. They had each of those things before they were mandated. Volvo's CEO has announced that they want to eliminate all deaths in Volvo cars by 2020. He also says that if a self-driving car has an accident, it's the manufacturer's fault and the manufacturer's financial responsibility.

Kluny 11y ago
I was told this story by a car nerd friend, and I won't guarantee its accuracy (feel free to confirm or deny if you have more information.) When Volvo began making cars, they were very beautiful, artistically designed instant classics, like this one: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/99/b5/39/99b539384b296fa63a99d0f7c010ab03.jpg https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/99/b5/39/99b539384... The founder of the company was passionate about making and driving beautiful cars, and he succeeded and built a pretty impressive company on that. However, he didn't pay much attention to safety, and died in a car wreck. His wife inherited the company, and instead of selling off the assets and retiring, decided to take the helm and begin producing the safest cars possible. Ever since, they've been on the leading edge of safety development. The cars weren't quite as pretty, but they didn't kill as many people. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/1988-1991_Volvo_240_GL_station_wagon_%282011-06-15%29_01.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/1988-199...
- onre 11y ago
  Not true, neither of the founders died in a car accident. Volvo had a very strong safety emphasis already in the '50s, introducing many firsts in the automotive safety field. In that decade they introduced shoulder belts as a world first and padded dashboard as an European first (Tucker had this already in '40s but only 51 cars were ever made).
  - masklinn 11y ago

ars 11y ago

Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U

rayiner 11y ago

If car safety stayed at 1960 levels, there would be about 60,000 car deaths per year. Valuing a human life at about $5 million, those 30,000 extra deaths would have an economic cost of $150 billion per year.

mikeash 11y ago
It would be a lot worse than that, actually. In 1960 there were about 720 billion vehicle miles traveled in the US, and these days it's about 3 trillion, an increase of a bit over 4x. In 1960 there were about 36,000 traffic fatalities, so given a bit over 4x exposure you'd see about 150,000 traffic fatalities per year today. That's about 120,000 or $600 billion.
- rfrey 11y ago
  Even that might be conservative, since it seems reasonable that deaths would increase more than linearly with increased highway traffic density.

cjensen 11y ago

It looks to me like Consumer Reports did an awful lot of cherry-picking of the data in that video. First, it looks to me like they made the collision happen at the max speed the Malibu could tolerate without collapsing the Malibu's passenger compartment. A slower collision might have been less catastrophic to the antique. A higher speed might have been catastrophic to the Malibu. Second, they picked an old car built before seatbelt introduction and emphasized that aspect. Third, they picked an accident type -- frontal offset -- which recent modern cars have been specifically engineered to handle. Fourth, note how carefully the video is edited so that you cannot see the right side of the antique post-crash either overhead or from the side. The editors didn't want to show anything that would detract from their chosen message. Modern cars really are a lot safer and way more reliable than cars when I was a kid, and I'm grateful for it. When my wife got pregnant, the first thing I did was sell my 69 Chevy Nova because I felt that to be responsible for my child, I needed to take care of my life by driving a safer car. All that said, it irks me that Consumer Reports treated the production and editing of this film as a propaganda exercise instead of a straight-up tell-the-facts documentary.

Aloha 11y ago
It's also a surprisingly common accident type, and the speeds picked are typical for this accident type too - you may not see it because you live in a city, but in rural places with lots of two-lane roads its surprisingly common for a high-speed frontal offset collision to happen.
robwilliams 11y ago
>Second, they picked an old car built before seatbelt introduction and emphasized that aspect. How is that cherry picking? Seat belts are a huge safety improvement and it's a difference that applies to all old/new car comparisons, not just the specific old car they chose. >Third, they picked an accident type -- frontal offset -- which recent modern cars have been specifically engineered to handle. Why do you think they were specifically engineered to handle those accident types? They must be common enough to warrant the engineering expense to protect against it.
rtkwe 11y ago
1) All the tests they do happen at a defined speed, for the front overlap it's 40 MPH [1] which it looks like the video was doing. Can't really fault them for using their standard tests. 2) It was to show how much better cars have gotten in the 50 years (1959 to 2009 when the video was produced) seat belts didn't even appear as a standard fitting on a car until 1958 on a Saab. 3) New cars are engineered to handle all the types of crashes that the IIHS tests for. I don't see your point. 4) The newer car had basically no damage on the opposite side and I doubt the older car did better than the 2009. It's not shocking at all that the non involved side of the car wouldn't take much damage. They don't even track the movement on that side of the car during their tests. [1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/frontal-crash-tests http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/frontal-crash-...

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago

Old people: "They sure don't make 'em like they used to!" Me: Thank goodness.

BuckRogers 11y ago

There's a lot of obsession with head-on collisions in regards to safety but there are two things commonly forgotten about. The ability to stop quickly and rollover risk. I've always felt a large family sedan like a Ford Taurus was probably the overall safest thing you could drive. Decent stopping distance, low rollover risk and lots of crush zone room for modern engineering to absorb impact.

WWLink 11y ago
A fully loaded Taurus has all of the safety features (except I'm not sure it has forward collision warning? I think it does) It's also based on a Volvo platform. And very comfortable. XD I have no idea why nobody likes them, but they are awesome 2nd owner cars.

superuser2 11y ago

We've made enormous progress in holding up under collision, but giant steps back in collision avoidance. I remember around 5 years ago seeing a concept for the "car of the future" as basically a glass box optimizing visibility. In fact we've done the opposite: high beltlines, low and elongated roofs, rear visibility and rear side windows approaching zero. Volkswagen makes just about the only high-quality compact in the neighborhood of $20k that you can actually see out of. Mazda3, Prius, Elantra, etc. are seemingly part of a concerted effort to make the greatest amount of damage possible to the driver's situational awareness. Why? Just so they can sell you the blindspot monitoring options?