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All generally true statements, but we've taken it pretty far. The average vehicle weighs something like twice what it did thirty years ago, and where 40hp used
by ip26 8y ago
All generally true statements, but we've taken it pretty far. The average vehicle weighs something like twice what it did thirty years ago, and where 40hp used to be adequate fifty or sixty years ago, and 120hp could be "sporty" thirty years ago, many modern cars with less than 200 horses are described as underpowered today.
Tangent, "can barely cope with modern highway speeds", well, why does the highway speed limit have to be 65mph or 75mph or 80mph anyway? People got by when it was 55mph. Now, I'm not calling for the return of 55mph, but I'd like to point out that highway speeds are not natural law. Raising them was a choice- a choice that was one of many small pieces to arriving at where we are today, that is to say without much improvement in fuel economy.
- war1025 8y agoSpeed limits actually used to be about what they are today or higher until the oil crisis in the 70s when they enacted the national 55mph limit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
- Nasrudith 8y agoHighway speeds are also a bit of an arms race in themselves. The danger is in when you can't accelerate as expected compared to everbody else. Since 70s 'muscle cars' now have worse zero to sixty acceleration times than modern econoboxes who aren't even making it a priority. Just having a sweet sports car that floor it to sixty in fractions of a second isn't a danger in itself so long as used /safely/. It is when everybody does it that having an old junker that can't starts to become a bit of a hazard and congestion issue due to having to wait for bigger gaps. It is a bit of a matter of conventions akin to driving on the left or right side of the road - while there may be some fringe situational benefits in some circumstances it really doesn't matter what you do so long as everybody does the same thing. In a bit of irony unusually following the law when few others do can itself create bits of hazard.