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A big thank you to all the engineers who made my car safer. Feels good after watching this
by breitling 4y ago
A big thank you to all the engineers who made my car safer. Feels good after watching this
- TrueGeek 4y agoAs someone who drives a car from the 60s on weekends this was terrifying.
- hunter-gatherer 4y agoMy thought as well. Might be time to trade my shit in.
- wwweston 4y agoYeah, I'm having second thoughts about my 91 sedan with no airbag...
- orangepurple 4y agoThe lack of airbag is OK because you'll be decapitated by the steering column pushing the steering wheel through your neck (1:45 in linked video): 1998 Toyota Corolla vs 2015 Toyota Corolla (Auris): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xidhx_f-ouU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xidhx_f-ouU
- kube-system 4y agoIt’s not the airbag that keeps the steering column from going into your neck, it’s the collapsible steering column.
- Sebb767 4y agoI think the implied point was that the steering column will kill you anyway, so the lack of an airbag is not a problem.
- smileysteve 4y agoairbag is overrated as long as you wear a seatbelt. if it had had an airbag, it's likely to kill you either with phosphorus (early 90s) or metal shrapnel (late 90s to current)
- speedgoose 4y agoWe haven’t watch the same crash test videos.
- aidenn0 4y agoThe recent article about ejection seat failures makes me wonder about airbags
- gcheong 4y agoAt least you'll go out in style. Seriously though, it would be great see the older car styles brought back with modern safety standards or older cars in some way upgraded to modern safety standards.
- system2 4y agoLook at what they did to mustang.
- blt 4y agoNot possible sadly. A lot of the appealing features on older cars (thin pillars, tall windows) are incompatible with current safety standards. Part of the reason why new cars tend to look clunky.
- Doxin 4y agoI get why thin pillars don't work with modern safety standards, but surely tall windows are fine? There's plenty modern cars with fairly tall windows, like the renault kangoo?
- hef19898 4y agoYou need both, slim pillars and large windows, to have the same aesthetic as classic cars.
- DavidPeiffer 4y agoI'm not having success finding the requirements, but I am almost certain there are requirements on window size. Purely by logic, as the window size increases, side impact rating will decrease.
- blt 4y agoIt's not the tall windows themselves that are dangerous, it's the accompanying low door sills. Higher door sills mean more of your body is protected by metal instead of glass.
- 4y ago
- userbinator 4y agoAs someone whose daily driver is a "land yacht" from the early 70s, I'm not too worried... the crumple-zone is huge.
- ehnto 4y agoThere were some cars with crumple zones back then, but you very likely do not have a crumple zone capable of protecting you. No matter how long your bonnet, you will probably take the brunt of the impact with your body in a car from the 70s. Not saying don't drive it, I drive a 90s car with no airbags as a daily so I am only marginally better off.
- emmelaich 4y agoThey don't crumple much, despite the size.
- hef19898 4y agoWhat ever other car hit will so. In such an accident, the combined crumble zone is halved so. If you a concrete wall, good luck so. I know what would happen if I have a serious accident in my week-end hobby car so. A likely hood that is significantly reduced by current fuel prices. And a serious maintenance backlog...
- prmoustache 4y agoWhile you can't control all the outside parameters we also don't tend to drive them the same way.
- hef19898 4y agoAbsolutely not! You tend to be much more careful with hobby cars then you are with average daily drivers.
- vannevar 4y agoA big thank you as well to all the consumer advocates, and the politicians and regulators who listened to them, for imposing safety requirements that car companies claimed would be cost prohibitive and hurt the economy.
- kube-system 4y agoBut mostly, the insurance institute, who out of greed, wanted to save money on claims. When incentives are aligned in the right way, good things can happen, even out of self interest.
- vannevar 4y agoOdd then that the insurance companies haven't been on the front lines against sugar, air and water pollution, climate change, meat consumption, etc etc. But good to know their greed-driven self-interests are closely aligned with individuals.
- kube-system 4y agoThe safety of occupants in a car is directly influenced by the car itself. Those other issues are obscured by tragedies of the commons. If you install a carbon neutral HVAC system in your Florida home, it doesn’t decrease your probability of hurricane damage due to climate issues.
- vannevar 4y agoIt does, just not by much if you look at individual cases. But insurance companies don't look at individual cases, they aggregate risk. And if millions of people buy carbon neutral HVAC systems, it will definitely decrease aggregate insurance liability for hurricanes. The flaw in your original argument, and the reason we don't generally see insurance companies on the front lines lobbying for positive changes for consumers, is that they have the option of simply raising their prices in response to the risk landscape, rather than trying to change the landscape itself. This is why free markets, as useful as they are in many contexts, can't be relied on by themselves to provide a healthy, stable society.
- TedShiller 4y agothank Ralph Nader
- thrown_22 4y ago
- jweir 4y agoHear, hear!
- e-clinton 4y agoBlame it on the alcohol, not the cars.
- thrown_22 4y agoFunny how alcohol on trams doesn't kill tens of thousands a year in Europe.
- kube-system 4y agoPeople everywhere (well, a lot of places anyway) drink alcohol. The problem is when they go home.
- luvs2code 4y agoSo the alcohol is part of the story but far from the end of it. Alcohol related accidents only made up about 1/3 of the deadly accidents in the US [0]. The NHTSA identifies a few different causes of car accidents including distracted driving and drug or alcohol related accidents [1]. Also noteworthy is that Marijuana seems to cause the same issues as alcohol although the studies are a little less detailed[2]. I couldn't find long term studies on the topic but I suspect that distracted driving has gone up in the past few years since smart phones have become more popular. Distracted drivers killed about 3,000 people in 2020 [3]. What's interesting is that insurance companies seem to measure bad driving using a few different metrics including deaths per miles traveled [5]. Single vehicle crashes were also very dangerous in the rural states like Wyoming (deer are a serious problem), but for some reason Rhode Island tied with Montana at 70% of all accidents being single vehicle accidents[6]. I also couldn't find an annual figure for people disabled in car accidents, but a 2004 study found that about 1.2 million Americans live with permanent injuries from car accidents and about 41% of them are unable to work [6]. [0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving [2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drug-impaired-driving https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drug-impaired-driving [3] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving [4] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/worst-drivers-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/worst-drive... [5] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state... [6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15474547/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15474547/