4 ms·

My threat model must be a bit different. I imagine my odds of being an accident in which 25 years of crash safety advancements help are higher than being hacke

My threat model must be a bit different. I imagine my odds of being an accident in which 25 years of crash safety advancements help are higher than being hacked. (and for the inevitable flood of "But the A pillars are bigger" comments, if you're safety conscious you can still get cars with reasonably sized A pillars. A few years ago Honda specifically called out smaller, further recessed, A pillars for visibility in the Accord redesign)

Roark66 4y ago
I tend to drive almost exclusively older cars. Once I had an accident in a 15 year old golf (this was around 2015 so the golf was made in around year 2000). This was basically emergency breaking on wet road at motorway speeds(about 130kph or 80mph)followed by loss of traction, then some sideways sliding finished with head on smashing into a side barrier with enough force that the car ended in the middle of the road (it must have bounced, but I have to admit I can't remember the exact moment, I estimate it was probably still going at last 45kph 30mph when it hit). I was perfectly fine except loosing few seconds of time. I managed to jump out of the car and have enough presence of mind to drag it off to the side of the road before incoming traffic crashed into it(thankfully wheels were fine enough for this). The car was totaled, and I didn't even have a scratch. That's an example of now 20 year + car safety...
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  Doing 80 mph in the rain and having a road barrier save your life is great, but I don't think I said "A 25 year old car is a death sentence" It's just pretty well established that in the last 25 years we've made huge strides is vehicle safety. People routinely walk away from accidents where they would die in a 25 year old car because of those advancements. The difference in survivability is not small: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811825 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
  - Roark66 4y ago
    I wouldn't say a road barrier had any positive effect on the situation. What probably saved the situation is that a 20 year old golf handles way better in a slip than the cheapest of current cars (at least back then in 2015) which was the usual choice when I rented at the time. Would I be doing 80mph in a Fiat Punto in the first place?Probably not. Would 60 mph be enough to loose traction in it? Who knows. If you extend the time range to 25 years I might agree, but let's say we start at year 2000. I fail to see those "huge strides in vehicle safety". Perhaps what you mean is that certain "upper tier" features made their way into basic equipment. That no doubt has positive impact on an average driver. However, at least for me, any time I bought/rented an old car it was always a top spec version, so as mentioned. I don't see those huge strides.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    The last 25 years have seen some improvements, but nothing nearly as dramatic as the change between the 25 years prior to that. Seatbelts, airbags, crash testing and designing a car for survivability in case of an accident are all things that happened between 1970 and 1990, since then we've seen incremental improvements but for the most part things have not changed all that much. That's also why automobile manufacturers have trouble introducing new models because the older ones are really pretty good. The car I'm driving has gone through 2 upgrades since 1997 (the year it was built) and neither of those is a huge improvement safety wise over the one that I've got. The biggest question mark is probably the longevity of the pyrotechnics and the airbag materials, but for both I've been reassured multiple times by the dealership that they are fine (not something you want to test), and that this goes for any airbags manufactured after 1993 except for one particular notorious bad batch made by Takata, and those fortunately are not in my car.
- filoleg 4y ago
  A single anecdote is not data. I can fall by slipping on ice dressed in shorts and a tshirt, and walk away fine. But i can also do the same, but dressed in a way more padded and protective winter coat, pants, boots, then fall and twist my ankle. That doesn't say much about relative safety of shorts+tshirt and protective winter gear when it comes to falling on ice. Back to the topic at hand, are you claiming that all of the safety improvements added to the cars over the past 20 years didn't make a massive positive impact on passenger safety during collisions? Arent't there agencies worldwide that issue safety ratings after performing variety of tests and studies (that are way more rigorous and quantitative than a one-off anecdote), and they show massive safety improvements over time for all cars in general? Or are you trying to claim that those agencies can't be trusted, and that their tests are not valid? I am not trying to be combative about it. I am just genuinely trying to figure out what point you were trying to make with this anecdote, but all I have right now is pure guesses.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Not the op, but I'll note all of those tests are about what physically happens once you're in crash or specific situation. Many or most don't gauge how or why you got into that situation, or how likely you are to do so in that vehicle. I don't know how "firmware update made care less safe" or "adaptive cruise control disengaged unexpectedly" or (my personal concern) "car UI negatively impacted drivers situational awareness and reaction time" etc would show up in e.g. IIHS rating? A good 10-20 year old car may have as good crash rating as many modern cars. top or average modern cars may be better than top or average 10 year old cars. Stats are interesting thing. But then there's the average driver assistance vs average UI vs average visibility vs average handling of these cars. Bottom line, I don't feel less safe but I do feel differently safe, in my old Subaru and new Honda.
    - filoleg 4y ago
      > I don't know how "firmware update made care less safe" or "adaptive cruise control disengaged unexpectedly" or (my personal concern) "car UI negatively impacted drivers situational awareness and reaction time" etc would show up in e.g. IIHS rating? What percentage of crashes can be attributed to that? Let's make it simpler, how many crashes per year as a raw number happen due to those reasons you listed? Because out of all things I would be worried about when it comes to car safety, this is the one that is least concerning to me. Especially since for most modern cars that have such a thing as "software updates" in the first place, they have the driving subsystem and infotainment subsystem entirely detached (yes, even on Teslas). Very easy to confirm yourself by force rebooting the infotainment center and seeing that the car still drives just fine.
rgmerk 4y ago
I’d add that the pollution from older vehicles causes the premature deaths of quite a lot of people and sickness in a whole bunch more. Particularly if it’s burning oil, which a lot of old cars do.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  My daily driver is from 1996. My son's daily driver is from 1963 and he's about to take it on a 3k mi trip. We also have a 69 and a 61. We are monsters.
  - rgmerk 4y ago
    The US Clean Air Act is estimated to prevent over 200,000 premature deaths each and every year. https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/benefits-and-costs-clean-air-act-1990-2020-second-prospective-study https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/benefits-and-cost... Like it or not, old cars spew highly toxic crap out their exhaust.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  I'll happily bet that mine is in better shape than 80% or so of what rolls of the assembly line. It's better than it was when it was first built. Anyway, it's interesting how 'old' is immediately associated with 'unsafe', whereas the main deciding factor isn't really how old the car is but how well it has been maintained, what price bracket it is in (cheap cars are much less safe than expensive ones) and what make & model. Then there is the driver, experience level, whether they drink and drive and are well rested. Because the best way to survive an accident is to avoid getting into one in the first place. There are obvious outliers on all of these and my personal safety is rather high on my list of things to be careful with.
jacquesm 4y ago
I'm fine. But I was almost in two crashes with a very new model car on account of buggy software. And the chances of that are higher than being hacked. Considerably higher. The best way to avoid crashes is to drive less, which is what I'm also doing and why I expect this car to last the rest of my life (and probably well beyond, the way I'm maintaining it). It's my daily driver because that's what I would be driving if I were to drive on any given day but I'm actually quite surprised to find out that I spent more last year on insurance than on fuel.
- amatecha 4y ago
  Yes, the functionality that tries to keep the vehicle in the lane nearly steered me into a concrete barrier in a construction zone when I rented a vehicle a few years back. Not exactly the kind of stuff I want happening while I'm driving on a highway in a foreign country. Could have ruined the trip, or worse.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    In my case a fairly new C-class MB that decided that posts on bridges are in front of the car and not to the side and a large advertising board in a corner was about to be hit. In both of those cases the car turned what was a perfectly safe ride into instant near accident and if not for many years of experience I'm pretty sure the first would have resulted in a major crash. I got rid of the car after the second one. Automatic emergency braking is probably great if all you do is highway traffic and stop-and-go but it really sucks that you can't disable it and that it isn't able to distinguish between safe and unsafe to a degree that it will turn a safe situation into an unsafe one all by itself. At that point in time a safety feature becomes a risk in itself. Possibly the statistics are still in favor of the solution but I'd rather take my chances.

Roark66 4y ago

I tend to drive almost exclusively older cars. Once I had an accident in a 15 year old golf (this was around 2015 so the golf was made in around year 2000). This was basically emergency breaking on wet road at motorway speeds(about 130kph or 80mph)followed by loss of traction, then some sideways sliding finished with head on smashing into a side barrier with enough force that the car ended in the middle of the road (it must have bounced, but I have to admit I can't remember the exact moment, I estimate it was probably still going at last 45kph 30mph when it hit). I was perfectly fine except loosing few seconds of time. I managed to jump out of the car and have enough presence of mind to drag it off to the side of the road before incoming traffic crashed into it(thankfully wheels were fine enough for this). The car was totaled, and I didn't even have a scratch. That's an example of now 20 year + car safety...

BoorishBears 4y ago
Doing 80 mph in the rain and having a road barrier save your life is great, but I don't think I said "A 25 year old car is a death sentence" It's just pretty well established that in the last 25 years we've made huge strides is vehicle safety. People routinely walk away from accidents where they would die in a 25 year old car because of those advancements. The difference in survivability is not small: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811825 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
- Roark66 4y ago
  I wouldn't say a road barrier had any positive effect on the situation. What probably saved the situation is that a 20 year old golf handles way better in a slip than the cheapest of current cars (at least back then in 2015) which was the usual choice when I rented at the time. Would I be doing 80mph in a Fiat Punto in the first place?Probably not. Would 60 mph be enough to loose traction in it? Who knows. If you extend the time range to 25 years I might agree, but let's say we start at year 2000. I fail to see those "huge strides in vehicle safety". Perhaps what you mean is that certain "upper tier" features made their way into basic equipment. That no doubt has positive impact on an average driver. However, at least for me, any time I bought/rented an old car it was always a top spec version, so as mentioned. I don't see those huge strides.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  The last 25 years have seen some improvements, but nothing nearly as dramatic as the change between the 25 years prior to that. Seatbelts, airbags, crash testing and designing a car for survivability in case of an accident are all things that happened between 1970 and 1990, since then we've seen incremental improvements but for the most part things have not changed all that much. That's also why automobile manufacturers have trouble introducing new models because the older ones are really pretty good. The car I'm driving has gone through 2 upgrades since 1997 (the year it was built) and neither of those is a huge improvement safety wise over the one that I've got. The biggest question mark is probably the longevity of the pyrotechnics and the airbag materials, but for both I've been reassured multiple times by the dealership that they are fine (not something you want to test), and that this goes for any airbags manufactured after 1993 except for one particular notorious bad batch made by Takata, and those fortunately are not in my car.
filoleg 4y ago
A single anecdote is not data. I can fall by slipping on ice dressed in shorts and a tshirt, and walk away fine. But i can also do the same, but dressed in a way more padded and protective winter coat, pants, boots, then fall and twist my ankle. That doesn't say much about relative safety of shorts+tshirt and protective winter gear when it comes to falling on ice. Back to the topic at hand, are you claiming that all of the safety improvements added to the cars over the past 20 years didn't make a massive positive impact on passenger safety during collisions? Arent't there agencies worldwide that issue safety ratings after performing variety of tests and studies (that are way more rigorous and quantitative than a one-off anecdote), and they show massive safety improvements over time for all cars in general? Or are you trying to claim that those agencies can't be trusted, and that their tests are not valid? I am not trying to be combative about it. I am just genuinely trying to figure out what point you were trying to make with this anecdote, but all I have right now is pure guesses.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Not the op, but I'll note all of those tests are about what physically happens once you're in crash or specific situation. Many or most don't gauge how or why you got into that situation, or how likely you are to do so in that vehicle. I don't know how "firmware update made care less safe" or "adaptive cruise control disengaged unexpectedly" or (my personal concern) "car UI negatively impacted drivers situational awareness and reaction time" etc would show up in e.g. IIHS rating? A good 10-20 year old car may have as good crash rating as many modern cars. top or average modern cars may be better than top or average 10 year old cars. Stats are interesting thing. But then there's the average driver assistance vs average UI vs average visibility vs average handling of these cars. Bottom line, I don't feel less safe but I do feel differently safe, in my old Subaru and new Honda.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    > I don't know how "firmware update made care less safe" or "adaptive cruise control disengaged unexpectedly" or (my personal concern) "car UI negatively impacted drivers situational awareness and reaction time" etc would show up in e.g. IIHS rating? What percentage of crashes can be attributed to that? Let's make it simpler, how many crashes per year as a raw number happen due to those reasons you listed? Because out of all things I would be worried about when it comes to car safety, this is the one that is least concerning to me. Especially since for most modern cars that have such a thing as "software updates" in the first place, they have the driving subsystem and infotainment subsystem entirely detached (yes, even on Teslas). Very easy to confirm yourself by force rebooting the infotainment center and seeing that the car still drives just fine.

rgmerk 4y ago

I’d add that the pollution from older vehicles causes the premature deaths of quite a lot of people and sickness in a whole bunch more. Particularly if it’s burning oil, which a lot of old cars do.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
My daily driver is from 1996. My son's daily driver is from 1963 and he's about to take it on a 3k mi trip. We also have a 69 and a 61. We are monsters.
- rgmerk 4y ago
  The US Clean Air Act is estimated to prevent over 200,000 premature deaths each and every year. https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/benefits-and-costs-clean-air-act-1990-2020-second-prospective-study https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/benefits-and-cost... Like it or not, old cars spew highly toxic crap out their exhaust.
jacquesm 4y ago
I'll happily bet that mine is in better shape than 80% or so of what rolls of the assembly line. It's better than it was when it was first built. Anyway, it's interesting how 'old' is immediately associated with 'unsafe', whereas the main deciding factor isn't really how old the car is but how well it has been maintained, what price bracket it is in (cheap cars are much less safe than expensive ones) and what make & model. Then there is the driver, experience level, whether they drink and drive and are well rested. Because the best way to survive an accident is to avoid getting into one in the first place. There are obvious outliers on all of these and my personal safety is rather high on my list of things to be careful with.

jacquesm 4y ago

I'm fine. But I was almost in two crashes with a very new model car on account of buggy software. And the chances of that are higher than being hacked. Considerably higher. The best way to avoid crashes is to drive less, which is what I'm also doing and why I expect this car to last the rest of my life (and probably well beyond, the way I'm maintaining it). It's my daily driver because that's what I would be driving if I were to drive on any given day but I'm actually quite surprised to find out that I spent more last year on insurance than on fuel.

amatecha 4y ago
Yes, the functionality that tries to keep the vehicle in the lane nearly steered me into a concrete barrier in a construction zone when I rented a vehicle a few years back. Not exactly the kind of stuff I want happening while I'm driving on a highway in a foreign country. Could have ruined the trip, or worse.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  In my case a fairly new C-class MB that decided that posts on bridges are in front of the car and not to the side and a large advertising board in a corner was about to be hit. In both of those cases the car turned what was a perfectly safe ride into instant near accident and if not for many years of experience I'm pretty sure the first would have resulted in a major crash. I got rid of the car after the second one. Automatic emergency braking is probably great if all you do is highway traffic and stop-and-go but it really sucks that you can't disable it and that it isn't able to distinguish between safe and unsafe to a degree that it will turn a safe situation into an unsafe one all by itself. At that point in time a safety feature becomes a risk in itself. Possibly the statistics are still in favor of the solution but I'd rather take my chances.