A small 2009 car demolishes a 1959 Chevy in a crash test [video]
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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.
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/b5/39/99b539384...
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/1988-199...
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).
And ultimately decided to make the patent (US 3043625) license-free and open (essentially copyleft)
http://web.origin.volvocars.com/SiteCollectionImages/TopNavi...
A friend had a sporty two-seater Volvo P1800, and it had this exact seat belt clasp. It felt like something out of an airplane - solid, metal, no-nonsense - and it basically was, because the designer used to do ejection seats at Saab.
That's a claim that can change auto insurance big time.
If I had to guess there will probably be tests like the Institute for Highway Safety does but to test autonomous car software, maybe mostly simulated so they can run a huge number of tests again and again (a Matrix-for-Cars).
Yeah, that's the problem; it means you can't insure away the problem, and each jury gets told to slap on a high enough penalty to ensure the SDC maker "never does it again", and you know how that goes.
The problem isn't the insurer's solvency, but the SDC maker's.
One venue that has caps, for similar reasons, is vaccines. Because vaccines are safe and necessary, we need a way to ensure vaccine makers exist and aren't sued to bankruptcy over the inevitable few deaths, so there's a special system for ensuring compensation of the victims, and makers can accurately set aside a known quantify of money for those deaths.
Wrong.
This video and test were done by the IIHS, an insurance-industry funded groups. The DOT crash tests are lame; it took the IIHS to push offset-frontal crash tests like this. The Federal government thinks that all auto crashes are frontal head-on crashes with no offset whatsoever.
IIHS and European tests are far better, but as usual, the US standards are stupid and backwards, just like they are for vehicle lighting and everything else. The DOT requirement for those idiotic "sealed beam" headlights are what kept the fronts of cars looking so ugly for so long, while the Europeans had moved to better-designed halogen bulbs and housing long before but couldn't export them to the US.
This is very much the free market at work. Money (which people like to call "Greed") drives both consumers and insurers to find the scientifically best car. Insurers have more appropriate loses, and customers have fewer deaths (or a better safety level for their dollars spent).
The IIHS makes the knowledge about car safety much less asymmetric in the market.
The UL does a similar thing, and I think this is the model that is more effective.
It doesn't take an act of congress for the IIHS to come up with a new test and new standards as technology improves and new areas of risk are discovered!
Edit: I see my parent is being downvoted. He pointed out the basic facts of the situation, but since it was not sufficiently authoritarian he is being downvoted. I feel this site is anti-intellectual.
> Wrong.
>This video and test were done by the IIHS
I believe GP was not referring to video, but to the safety legislation leading to starkly improved safety performance of the 2009 vehicle (I thought their second line made this very clear)
and Saab, which was a point of contention when they were acquired by GM (Saab people insisted on safety, GM put profit first) and probably is the reason Saab (the original) is no longer
I believe Ford made a big deal out of their padded dashboards in the 1950s as well but I would have to dig up references to that.
While Volvo has a great safety record they are not even close to the only manufacturer with a history of adding safety features to their cars. Safety is good business, the US domestics have known this for decades.
The 1971 Oldsmobile Torornado brochure prominently features ABS and specifically calls out the safety features available in that year: http://www.lov2xlr8.no/brochures/olds/71toro/bilder/6.jpg
GM's response to the aforementioned? One of petulance and cowardice. They had to be hauled into Congress, kicking and screaming of course, before anything was done.
In general I think it's widely agreed that all businesses almost universally tend to oppose most forms of gov't imposed change.
"Top Ford Motor Company executives went so far as to arrange a meeting with President Nixon to plead against a federal regulation that would have required air bags in all cars, starting with 1973 models. The meeting had the desired effect: Mr. Nixon ordered the regulation quashed. Eleven years after the 1971 meeting, a transcript from secret Oval Office tapes disclosed the conversation."
I believe the Toronado air bags might have been offered just to provide a tool to say consumers did not want them.
Earlier on, they also fought seat belts. Then later, they fought for state laws mandating seat belt use by drivers, just so they could say the airbags were not necessary in the presence of seat belts. And a bunch of other stuff. Classic cartel behavior.
For some reason, VW didn't see it that way wrt the diesel emissions.
Maybe you need to recheck your understanding of other motivations.
Given the obviousness of the above, the real question is how you came to make such a silly post. My best guess is that you simplified the positions into "companies accept emission standards = companies GOOD on environment, but VW cheating = VW BAD on environment", and that's how you saw a contradiction. Please take a bit longer to think your posts through.
VW has over 450,000 people - all viewing the world differently ( as demonstrated by VW's corporate actions differently)
Out of 450,000+, excluding the dealerships, not one agreed with you enough to blow the whistle.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/45-killed-as-b...
And it's not just this. I've personally witnessed at least 2 Volvos on fire on Bangalore roads, although thankfully, there weren't any fatalities. The positioning of the fuel tank is reportedly flawed in these buses.
Diesel doesn't burn in open air, without at least a wick and an existing source of ignition.
[1]https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Bel+Air,+Los+Angeles,+CA/Mal...
But on the positive note there is a 101 to gun safety class every two city blocks so I have that going for me...
It's how I learned.
And that doesn't even begin to touch the true magic in having a large collection of chemicals. Know when to use DC-4, WD-40, 33MS, brake cleaner, contact cleaner, and of course, GOJO.
It has been a fun journey and it is very nice to see through the utter nonsense most auto repair places spew. I would repeat that a community college course and/or Haynes is a good starting point and then it is off to the forum that caters to your car :).
To me, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the internet. No matter your make or model, there is a dedicated forum for your car. And it's got plenty of active accounts.
Why do we not have tablet apps which allow you to see how everything fits together, how the drivetrain redistributes energy, etc?
I'd still love a wireframe view of my Jeep I could manipulate on my iPad.
As a reference away from the garage, it would be cool, but I would still want something I would feel safe having by my side as I work on the car.
Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 on Steam is actually a reasonable, entertaining way to walk through the basics of auto repair. It will help you learn he names and functions of individual parts and systems as well as how they are interconnected, what they look like, their relative cost, and generally where they are. In the game you will, for example, start with real-life diagnostic codes and then troubleshoot from there, buying parts you hope will fix the issue.
After playing the game if you go to YouTube and search for your exact car (by year, make, and model), you'll find a bunch of repair videos. You'll now have the vocabulary and basic understanding to follow along with any common repair.
I find the attitude mentioned above annoying. Of course a ton of people do not understand these things. We make great cars today. So many of us really don't have to know.
It is a want to know in most cases. Share and share alike man.
My favorite line from the book was something like "we'd have far less accidents if we were all strapped to the front of our cars like an aztec sacrifice." Which, while probably not the best approach to safety, has a kernel of truth that things that make us feel same may not make us safer, because they make us more willing to take risks.
The book begins with a great section on the theory of all the parts of the car from the 4 stroke engine to the differential to the brakes--how they work and why they're needed.
Today, it is actually a lot more fun and accessible. Videos of most repairs are online and easy to follow. I compare this to the first time I changed a transmission, or timing belt, and it's like the sci-fi future is here. Ask about it, and there you go!
Often, books did not even have that many photos. You had to reason through the repair.
My advice on this is to get some good tools and a place to work on the car. Clean it too. Working on clean cars is fun. Poor tools and a dirty car can be hell.
Then, fix your car, upgrade it, or get a fun project car, maybe one you thought was cool as a kid.
Most anyone can work on 90's and older cars. Newer ones do still offer a lot of opportunities, but sometimes are tough, due to all the advanced controls in place.
The skill I got as a kid means I can get a 500 dollar beater, size it up, and be driving it regularly for a few weekends of work. It came in handy during hard times once in life. It still does when on camping adventures. I've done some crazy stuff to get vehicles home! Good times. (Not so good actually, but seeking adventure sometimes means finding it.)
It also helps if you have an old beater to work on so that you can take your time and you don't end up messing up your daily driver car.
Last summer I successfully replaced a clutch by myself on an old car of mine soley based on videos and walkthroughs I found online. It took forever and was probably an order of magnitude more difficult than any automotive repair I'd ever attempted prior to that, but I did it.
That actually sounds like a pretty fun idea. The engineer in me always loves learning how to take apart more things and put them back together.
I know that sounds insanely risky, but if you don't end up with parts left over, and everything seems like it went together correctly, the chances of screwing something up are very remote, and the chances of screwing it up in a way that won't be obvious in the first mile of driving are even more remote.
Anyone in the Cambridge, MA area who has a very flexible schedule and wants me to put an eyeball on them while they do their brakes, I'm willing (but scheduling is often a bear).
I would suggest this even before taking a class at the community college. I think you're going to be taking the class with peers who have spent at least 50 hours with a wrench in their hand growing up. You are going to learn more (or at least I would learn more) if you have some of the basics and have experience with the basic hand tools.
(If the off-street parking that you have is required by zoning, as opposed to optional, you are prohibited by Zoning article 6.21 from doing non-emergency repairs in such a space. This applies mostly to condo and apartment developments, and not to most single-family residences.)
Unlike the rest of the car, brakes are designed from the beginning to be replaceable. This makes them much easier to work on, and as long as you don't forget to insert the pads it's pretty obvious if you did it right.
Do one side at a time, so you have the other side to copy in case you are not sure at any step.
You'll need to learn how to lift a car, never work under a jack, always jack stands, and always two stands. (More stands, or stands plus the jack "as backup" is actually LESS safe! Stands are safe because in order to tip over you have to raise the car against gravity - you don't want anything that reduces the full weight of the car against the stands.)
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.
They also showed some actual wrecks so you could see what happens and how they break, and they really stressed that even though it might be tempting to buy a cheap, old, used car, DO NOT buy something built before the year 2000, stay on this side of the millennium, older cars are dangerous!
Unibody as a safety feature is more complex, Unibody cars are not inherently safer (quite arguably a perimeter frame may be safer for some collisions), and until recently they were often heavier for the same size car - it wasn't until the late 70's-80's where a unibody could be lighter than a BOF car because of enhanced computer modeling - generally a unibody however is safer than the X-frame as exemplified in this video.
No one is safe from link rot.
Usually, it seems like things get invented by someone else first and sold to safety-minded consumers and then mandated by the government when they realize what a great idea it is. The rearview camera is a good example of this: lots of cars have them to improve visibility, and there's lots of data showing how many kids and pets get backed over every year, so the US government has mandated that all new cars have them by 2018. My new car has one, and honestly, I'm not sure how I ever got along without it now. Aside from kids, it makes backing up so much easier it's ridiculous; I can easily back into very tiny spaces leaving 12 inches of space behind my rear bumper, something I could never do with my previous smaller cars. That makes it easier to do parallel parking for instance.
Only later was his research used to design restraints, and also create the instrumented crash test dummies that are used in automobile crash tests.
There are videos on Youtube of the early crash tests that were performed - they're rather comical to today's eyes. But they were serious business that was top secret - the car companies didn't want it to get out that their cars could crash and harm their customers (despite everyone knowing someone who was in an auto accident). Compare that to the publicity of the Ad Council's PSAs from the late 80's with crash test dummies Vince and Larry, with the tagline "You Could Learn A Lot From a Dummy". Big change in attitudes.
The reason this is the case, near as I can tell, is that for the modern leftist government is a god. Statism is a religion.
Even when government is the cause of the problems, people so often turn around and want more government to fix them.
Markets work best when you can attach a profit mechanism to a worthy goal (or just the task at hand).
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.)
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.
That said, AFAIK language-level invariants in Java (and Python, etc.) cannot be violated by the lack of thread safety; meaning, you can still inspect every live object and see its state. Program-level invariants might go to heck, for sure. So what I should have said is more along the lines of "memory safety" than "lack of undefined behavior"; I'm not sure what the shortest and most precise way to put it is, though. (It does not quite end with memory safety but it doesn't quite get to lack of undefined behavior, either.)
A lot of work has been put into tools and our general ability to write better code (although whether we do so or not is a different issue).
Would you like to write a web-app in C?
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.)
[1] http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automoti... Search for "Jim Snell"
Me: Thank goodness.
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-safet...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-...
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.
I have a 2011 Crown Victoria - which compared to a 2011 Charger is night and day difference.
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.
If you're looking at midsize sedans, FWIW, I found the Honda Accord and the Subaru Legacy to have the best headroom.
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.
'Why Left Turns Are So Deadly' 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.
>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.
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.
I didn't expect my comment to provoke such a tremendous backlash.
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.
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.
I think every person who lives because of those diminishing returns is grateful for any progress made.
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.
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.
Edit: wait, how are mileage based statistics unfair in the opposite direction? The inaccuracy with those comes from inconsistent exposure to danger (i.e. city roads versus divided highways versus narrow rural roads) and inconsistent numbers of people per vehicle. It's really hard to say which way that inaccuracy goes, only that it exists.
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.
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.)
Discs are probably better, but I don't think the safety gains for them are that significant.
There's no power assist on most motorcycle brakes. I've owned motorcycles with drum brakes. OMG, I'll take the disc brakes any day, power assist or no.