Head-On Crash: 2009 Chevrolet Malibu vs. 1959 Bel Air (2009)
thecarconnection.com
thecarconnection.com
From the article:
> According to safety engineers at the scene, the driver of the 2009 Chevrolet Malibu would likely have suffered slight knee injury. The driver of the 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air would have died instantly.
Wonder how whiplash cases have trended over time. Wouldn't be surprised if they've gone up -- more survivable crashes, haha.
If not, then that makes sense why it would be so prevelant of a thing for the ambulance chasers to use
I had a motion x-ray done of my neck that finally demonstrated that my skull slips slightly side-to-side relative to my atlas (C1 vertebra). So what seemed like my muscles overreacting or just me complaining about psychogenic neck pain (or trying to scam the insurance company) was actually my muscular system making sure I don't suffer an internal decapitation.
If anyone's having trouble with the insurance company insisting nothing is wrong because the static x-rays look fine, I cannot recommend highly enough that you look into a motion x-ray. It's very possible that your spine is only fine when it isn't moving, and that's no way to live your life.
She told the insurance company that the claim was probably fraudulent, and their response was "most whiplash claims are probably fraudulent, but it's cheaper to settle"
I’ve never had it seriously enough that I’ve needed treatment, but I have had a minor kink in my neck that shows up later in the day. The kind of pain where it’s sore when you turn you head one very specific direction.
That stuff is not a joke.
(more lighthearted note: after 3 months, her symptoms were mostly gone except for a new and intermittent nausea. The therapist was confounded for a few days, until he suggested the cause of that might be more related to me than the truck driver)
I had a quick google but the only paper I found that proposed some mechanism ("vertebrobasilar artery insufficiency (VBI) leads to brainstem and cerebellar ischemia and infarction following cervical manipulation", i.e. bashing the neck might mess up blood flow to the brain somehow, causing bits of it to die off) looks complete bullshit.
Also in my last accident, it tooks months for the symptoms to become evident. When an EMT or doctor checks you out after an accident they are checking for life threatening injuries. Not saying "OK, despite the accident you are 100% the same! Go about life as normal!"
I dropped a motorcycle at the track a little over a year ago, and bounced off the tire wall in the process. Had a few bumps and bruises, but felt fine, until my back freaked out a month later. I got it sorted without too much trouble, but whiplash injuries do funny things.
Traffic lights often result in rear-ends (they commonly increase after red light cam installation, though are still safer than the t-bones red light cameras reduce.) Roundabouts, which are more common in Europe, cause these much less, and since you have to slow down to enter one any sort of crashes in one tend to be at slower speeds.
I'm going through wiplash myself right now (mostly gone) and I think that too much drama played a major role. In my case not because of any claims situation, but because having recently gone through an intracranial hemorrhage and because of having spent a year of my early career typing out neurosurgery reports from dictaphone. The result was that I wasn't sufficiently confident that it might be "just whiplash". Went on for months, with hardly any improvement, until a physiotherapist gave me a demonstration of just how capable those muscles are of creating the nastiest headaches. I'm quite convinced that this change to my mind was more important than the changed my neck muscles. I'd expect the drama created by the claims situation too have a similar effect as that alleviated hypochondrism I had, creating a link from claims to severity that isn't related to fraud at all. Fraud certainly exists, but its role might be much smaller that suggested by that link.
I remember that story from HN as well by the way, might actually have been a contributing factor in my disbelief/hypochondrism: "this pain is real, certainly not that thing that hardly exists outside of the American claims ecosystem". Beware of unexpected side-effects I guess.
(another factor in the difference USA vs rest of the world, entirely unrelated to claims, is likely the "unique" relationship with painkillers. Tho put it in perspective: I lost two trips to France to that injury that I had been looking forward to for months, but didn't take a single pill in the entire ordeal)
If you're looking at casualties from motorcycle incidents, you by definition are not looking at survivors.
In earlier years, there used to be 3 neurosurgeons kept on staff. Once seatbelt laws came into effect in the 1970s, that number went down to 1.
Wow, how many lives were saved!
Essentially the car becomes the helmet and does a more complete job on the whole body than just the helmet on the motorcyclist.
I'm surprised the number went down, I'd have thought there would be far more car crash survivors with traumatic brain injuries once people stopped being killed outright so often.
Least we forget in 1959 the US car industry was already 60 years old.
The car industry fought tooth and nail against seat belts and other things like collapsible steering columns.
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
I am certain that some car makers did not like the idea, but you cant say that the industry as a whole fought against seatbelts.
To stay in the air, you either need to push a lot of air down (like a helicopter or drone), or have wings and push a lot of air backwards (like an airplane).
The former allows you to hover, but is incredibly loud. The latter allows gliding, but requires a runway for takeoff/landing, not to mention a lot of lateral space for wings.
Unless we have a breakthrough discovery and find a way to create lift without requiring either speed or moving a ton of air, the sci-fi visions of flying cars will remain fiction.
Then they captured a crash between two vehicles at about 35 mph. Today both parties would get out and exchange insurance companies. However this was not the case. Two ambulances hauled away the drivers and the narrator of the film said one did not make it. Indeed we have come a long way in car safety in the past sixty years.
I am genuinely curious where we would be now in regard to automotive safety without government regulation.
People fighting tooth and nails that without helmets they ride safer (what?), they have more situational awareness (more what? we talk about cyclists helmets) and various other arguments that make 0 sense to me, just emotional swings of people rejecting being told what to do by default.
My 2 cents - I didnt wear helmet on bike during youth since nobody did. But when I bought my new xc bike in 2008 I bought a helmet with it. Within a month I had accident due to screwup of my GF back then, where I hit the ground face down hard, losing few seconds of my memory. There was spiky stone in the ground where my forehead hit full force. I would be dead for a long time now if I didnt wear that helmet. No accident before or after, but you only need that 1 moment, same with safety belts.
In any individual incident, a helmet would make things better. However, a helmet is a very bulky thing, most bikes lack a secure storage, and people just don’t want to carry around a big helmet when they go shopping, or to a restaurant, or any other activities. So if you mandate it, biking rates will go down, and cyclists become so uncommon on roads that drivers stop being familiar with how to drive around them, stop looking out for cyclists that are almost never there, etc.
There’a also some evidence that drivers will adjust their behavior based on perceived cyclist protection and skill level; the behavior around a person in a hat and sundress is different than someone in full Lycra with helmet.
But jurisdictions with helmet mandate show no clear reduction in injury rates: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410838/?tool=p...
In NA, lack of safety regulations is resulting in massively increased ride and hood heights, which is going to kill a lot of people over the coming years.
1998 Toyota Corolla vs 2015 Toyota Corolla (Auris):
Safety stands dictate what happens if you collide with a pedestrian. These days, ever car has a sloped front-end. It's not just for aerodynamics, but it's designed to push pedestrians up and onto the hood, whereas the old "stylish" cars had completely flat front-ends, which made it like getting hit by a wall.
Even worse, some older cars had a front end that had negative slopes. If they hit a pedestrian, they'd be pushed down and under the car.
Not saying don't drive it, I drive a 90s car with no airbags as a daily so I am only marginally better off.
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...
When incentives are aligned in the right way, good things can happen, even out of self interest.
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.
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.
The IIHS represents the interests of 94 percent of vehicle insurance policies on US roads. So, almost all of the cars on the road are under underwritten by policies of IIHS members. Any change they affect has a direct impact on their bottom line.
There are a few property insurance trade associations in the US, and I don't think any of them have quite as high of a membership representation as the IIHS does for auto insurers, but let's for the sake of argument, say that there's an association that represents a full 100% of homeowner and commercial property insurance policies.
If that existed, they would have influence over 13% of US emissions, or ~778 million metric tons of CO2. But, while insurance law does stay within a country's borders, CO2 doesn't. Global emissions are 35 billion metric tons. So this hypothetical super powerful trade group would have influence over 2% of the total. If they could impose an (extremely expensive) requirement of a 20% reduction across all of their policyholders, this would have a 0.4% reduction of the global CO2 emissions.
Basically, assuming the most powerful trade organization possible, it would have no real effect.
International cooperation is required to fix this particular problem, and insurance just isn't an international-scale thing. Treatises are going to be the only way to fix it.
That’s being said, they were a significant proponent that accelerated most of the safety improvements in North American vehicles since the mid 90s when they started doing overlap crash testing.
Before that, governments were mostly complacent with full-frontal crash testing, which simply wasn’t realistic enough.
Most of the major changes in North American vehicle safety has been due to their efforts.
Now, they’re not altruistic, they’re just asshole insurance companies with the right incentives.
While a full permitter frame (or early unibodies) does not negate the benefits of crumple zones - they absorb the impact of the crash, shielding the occupants from the forces of the impact - the X-Body GM Full Size does still perform exceptionally poorly.
I don't think anyone car argue that modern cars don't perform several orders of magnitude better in severe crashes - however for light crashes, your hunk of 50's-70's metal will often end up with significantly less damage, and at a minimum can be driven home.
I don't get your point - yes they have less damage, because they're not soaking up the energy. That's like saying "a motorcycle helmet made of solid steel won't damage as easily as a modern one". Sure, but that's exactly the point of a modern helmet
For a while, they mandated that a 5mph crash should result in almost no damage, which caused bumpers to evolve accordingly.
These days, the term "bumper" seems more like an anacronism.
Also, i'm wondering if there is any equivalent of the dieselgate scandal for crash testing - given the tests are controlled and repeatable, is there any suggestion that optimising to ace the tests creates any compromises in other areas which mean that overall injuries are more serious than otherwise would occur?
But the tests themselves are very comprehensive, both in the US and in the EU. It's like having 100% code coverage in your unit/integration/regression tests, and then doing test-driven development.
Because all that kinetic energy didn't get dissipated and so transferred into the softest bits of the car, which in the 50's-70's car was the driver.
Honda and Toyota, similarly, were death-trap cars until around the same time, because a)the Japanese have a much lower crash rate and travel far less on high-speed roadways so it wasn't a domestic issue, and b)they had to compete against Ford in the US market (and GM, who had to compete against Ford.) In the EU, Euro-NCAP crash standards were forcing safety improvement among the non-luxury brands Honda and Toyota were mostly competing against (and GM/Ford brands/models sold in the EU, too.)
> I don't think anyone car argue that modern cars don't perform several orders of magnitude better in severe crashes - however for light crashes, your hunk of 50's-70's metal will often end up with significantly less damage, and at a minimum can be driven home.
Performance isn't judged based on damage level and "severe" versus "light" are completely arbitrary standards you picked aka "wiggle words."
Less damage to the car in any crash means more acceleration on you. Human body repair bills, especially in the US, cost significantly more than body damage to cars. Unfortunately, due to the sad state of US healthcare - getting to the ER and the first hours of medical care could cost more than the value of one's car, easily.
Given car crashes are a significant cause of injury and death in the US - and that modern cars are significantly less polluting (multiple orders of magnitude so) and more fuel efficient, quieter, more ergonomic and comfortable - I'll take a modern car, thanks. Side benefit: modern sedans and european SUVs are also significantly safer for pedestrians.
Since the 1960's there have been tremendous advances in safety for people INSIDE of automobiles, but the safety of people outside of automobiles continues to be largely ignored.
There is a kind of arms race underway toward larger and heavier vehicles, which are far more deadly than small cars.
We have inherited so many tragedies from our grandparents' generation - the dominance of the car is on spar with nuclear weapons in the threat it poses to humanity.
The car is required in a developing country like the US. There is so much space between things still.
Our grandparents wanted to get to work and travel. Hard to blame them.
Also, so far, MAD has greatly reduced the number of big wars. It's hard to predict the future, but nuclear weapons so far have provided a lot of peace.
As an example, I love the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, but after the pandemic they instituted this policy that pedestrians were no longer allowed to walk on the 3 Mile Drive. This is a service-type road throughout a park that people routinely walked on for decades. Not in a minor way either: it's a major pathway through the park that the park is designed around in many ways. It's difficult to not walk on the drive.
People also like to drive on it to look at the landscaping, and use it to get to locations in the arboretum. It really seemed to me that some wealthy benefactor complained to the arboretum about pedestrians as they were driving around, and the park in the process banned the pedestrians. In the process they immediately made the place much more pedestrian hostile.
It's difficult to describe how absurd this is if you haven't been there, given the layout and history. They also used to routinely have fundraiser 5ks on it and no longer do, etc.
It's like they're literally moving to prioritize cars in the landscape in a park for landscaping.
This is after also limiting the density of visitors as well by requiring reservations.
Anyway, this is a place I love and I am really disappointed in in the last couple of years (I could go on about a couple of other things). It's partially a personal rant, but it's also to me a very good example of how cultural norms in the US are very car-centric and that trend seems to be increasing lately.
There's a great channel called "Not just bikes" that demonstrates what cities look like that don't follow this pattern. Denser buildings, narrower and fewer lanes, less space wasted on parking, better pedestrian crossings and islands, better signaling/timing for pedestrians, etc.
Those cities have lower noise, lower pollution, better economics (road maintenance is a massive cost) and are way safer.
He had some car advice:
> Forget "crumple zones". You want to be in the biggest, heaviest car. That's the one that will win the collision. It will often be an older car.
In this case, the '09 Malibu and the '59 Bel Air are almost exactly the same weight (about 3500 pounds), so you might think it would be an even draw. Or counting the fact that the Bel Air is almost 20 inches longer, it should win!
I have a feeling that my friend would have felt much safer in the Bel Air.
And of course, people completely ignore how poorly those vehicles handle. They can't turn on a dime, can't brake worth shit, and are prone to rolling.
I feel like driver's ed courses should include having to do emergency maneuvers in both a giant Chevy Suburban or Ford Expedition as well as a smaller Toyota Camry, or even a Miata.
You know what's better than a car that protects you during a crash? One that's agile enough to avoid it to begin with.
In 2006, the Crown Prince and Princess of Tonga, Tu’ipelehake and Kaimana, were killed along with their driver Vinisia Hefa when their Ford Explorer rolled over multiple times after being clipped by a speeding driver on Highway 101 through Menlo Park.
I can't second-guess the past, but I have a feeling that if they had been in a more agile vehicle, Vinisia may have been able to keep the vehicle upright and under control.
I wrote about it at the time:
https://mg.to/2006/07/08/prince-tuipelehake-and-princess-kai...
The Mercury News link is broken (I will fix it when I get a few minutes) so here is the Wayback copy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060713193143/https://www.mercu...
Just today I came close to having a similar incident. I was in my old Kia Rondo, a car-based "crossover SUV", making a lane change to the right on the freeway. Even after checking my blind spot I somehow missed this guy zooming up on the right.
He honked, I swerved, the Rondo handled well, no harm done. And I am hopeful that even if we had clipped each other, my car-driving reflexes would have worked.
I shudder to think what might have happened if I was driving one of those huge truck-based SUVs.
This article [1] has good technical details about construction and so on, two facts: the bag moves at around 200 mpg (322 km/h) when inflating, and it's all done in 1/25:th of a second, i.e. 40 ms.
[1]: https://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-reg...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Tullock#Tullock's_spike
They installed a divider on the Golden Gate Bridge back in 2015, and there was an unintended consequence of drivers speeding more because the perception of safety increased.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Golden-Gate-Bridge-ba...
[I don't have data on the Golden Gate Bridge specifically, just using it as an example]
The world is full of crazy and stupid people.
It's also generally just a harder crash for a car to deal with, so it makes sense to use in a comparison like this.
Crash testing will need to continually get updated to avoid manufacturers being able to target the tests too much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetabular_fracture
Here's one news example:
https://www.autoblog.com/2020/01/27/x-ray-injuries-feet-on-c...
https://group-media.mercedes-benz.com/marsMediaSite/en/insta...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oO226PgSkg
Their reactions are priceless and they are so lucky. A bit negligent perhaps.
They drove a faulty car knowingly, riding the brakes and cooked them.
Then in the video all they talk about is their injuries and how bad it was for them and damage to their clown car, no concern for the innocent person they hit.
A grade assholes.
are there no mandatory safety checks in the US? In most countries i've been in, a "home improved" car like this would need to be homologated before being driven on a public road
Otherwise in the majority of states there are no inspections, or only emissions inspections (the later tend to only be required in specific cities/counties).
In my opinion, the Countach or even the DeLorean had a design aesthetic that felt like a pinnacle that we've since strayed far, far away from. I don't want a bar of Dial soap. I want a sci-fi dream.
I'd like it if cars came as a kit you could heavily customize, like a PC. Maybe with the simpler construction of EVs this will become possible. I know I'd put a lot of attention into it.
As vain and unimportant as it may be, appearance is my #1 most valued trait and deciding factor when I buy vehicles. Everything else is secondary.
You must be a big fan of Ioniq 5 styling.
yet very aerodynamic. at some point, fuel effeciency/battery use requirements will lead all cars to look like a rain drop
80s-era movie and TV vehicles were a helluva lot of fun too:
A-Team van, Ninja Turtles party wagon, K.I.T.T., Magnum P.I.'s Ferrari 308.
And since you mentioned the Countach: https://youtu.be/bS5P_LAqiVg?t=115
And of course, yes, there are some modern cars that look neat. Usually when I see a modern car (or truck) that looks exceptionally interesting to the eye, it's in a vein of either:
1) "Artificial Badass" (Ford Raptor, H3, etc.)
2) "Speedbro" (Subaru Impreza)
Neither thing is bad, per say. However, what I was advocating is not something to impress or intimidate others, like those cars try to do, but instead to offer something that is simply aesthetically pleasing. Something that doesn't need to imply that the driver is cool or whatever, but just that the driver has some style. Some pzazz. Something for the owner, not the audience. I do that there has been something lost over the decades where average cars that average people could drive and feel happy to have driven it, is gone.
If you're not sure what I mean, consider the following offers that an average person might afford: 2009 Saturn Astra, 2010 Toyota Camry, 2012 Chevrolet Impala, 2009 Honda Civic
There's just nothing there that would make someone be proud to be an owner of any of those cars. They are just these bog standard, sad turds putting around on four wheels. They are the Dell OptiPlex XE3 of the car world. Uninspired. Uninteresting. Drab. It pains me to see these eye sores. The manufacturer could have at least provided interesting coats of paint from the factory. It's just various shades of champagne colored trash, lost in a sea of mediocrity.
To be fair, there are some more recent models of cars that seem to at least attempt to do something with the grill/radiator area to make them stand out in some token gesture, which I feel is reasonable. I just feel awful that there are so many makes and models of cars out there that are essentially indistinguishable from one another...unless you can afford to spend thousands of dollars more to get something vaguely nicer looking, which is a big ask for anyone on a budget.
My slightly more moderate view is that safety improvements should be focussed solely on preserving life outside the vehicle (both in terms of safety from crashes and damage to the environment).
Put a giant spike sticking out of the steering column that protrudes more and more as you drive above 30 mph for instance...
Edit: Deleted the rest of the comment, It is not worthwhile to have a nuanced discussion about the merits of the various safety improvements with this community.
So you are mad that they used a street legal car of the day to show that things have improved?
A fun historical fact I just discovered, "Ford offered seat belts as an option in 1955. These were not popular, with only 2% of Ford buyers choosing to pay for seatbelts in 1956" [0]. Which reads to me that many 1959 drivers would have been unlikely to have or use a seatbelt.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automot...
The coupe is a close to correct C-code, which I've driven under 1000 miles in the last decade, so I've decided to leave it with period-correct 1965 belts that a prior owner installed rather than modify the B-pillar as my exposure isn't very high on that car due to very low annual miles.