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Which safety regulations have caused cars to get heavier?
by bjourne 5y ago
Which safety regulations have caused cars to get heavier?
- xyzzyz 5y agoThe ones involving hitting obstacles and not crushing the passengers. Bigger and heavier vehicles are at an obvious advantage here, due to longer crumple zones, stronger frames etc.
- prepend 5y agoAirbags, crumple zones in frame. Here’s a whole list of US safety regulations and the weight they added through 2012, https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/812354 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8123...
- bjourne 5y agoThanks. The report says that 5% of the weight of new cars can be linked to safety features. So safety features can't be the main reasons cars have gotten heavier.
- invalidator 5y agoOff the top of my head, airbags, anti-intrusion beams, ABS, pedestrian protection (the hood has to be higher, which makes the whole car taller), rollover protection (the pillars are much thicker to prevent the roof from collapsing). They're sensible things, but each adds weight. Most of them scale sub-linearly with vehicle size, so the burden literally weighs heavier on small cars.