It's absolutely mind boggling that this is downvoted? Are pods and bugs really that popular? Do people like slow subways and traffic filled freeways? Unless you benefit from reduced competition high cost of distance is bad for you.
Pretty much every post-conviction thing court mandates people pay for is a blatant cash grab from people nobody will stand up for. Interlocks are no different.
> Not really sure what you're arguing for here. Are you for drunk driving or excessive speed driving or both?
Your strawman is naked. You should dress him in some plausible deniability.
There's nothing in the comment you are replying to to suggest in the slightest way that he is in favor of those things. Just because he's against the flavor of Skynet(TM) you want doesn't mean he's in favor of whatever random "bad thing" you want to paint him as in favor of.
Even if they hadn't strategically picked that model of old car for maximum crunch factor anyone without a seat belt may as well be on a motorcycle.
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.
>...by not doing a offset test or picking literally anything but a GM X-frame car (notoriously bad at overlap crashed, even by 1950s standards)
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.
I think the point is that an X-frame is extremely weak, so they showed one of the worst cars in 1959 to be in a crash with; many other cars of the time had full perimeter frames:
It’s a useful piece of context but it’s not really like the x-frame was niche and cherry-picked for this example. They sold a lot of these things (the platform, not just bel-airs)
If you step through the video with the "," and "." keys, you'll see that the steering wheel ends up in contact with the drivers seatback. A seatbelt that holds the driver in place doesn't help if there is no safe space for a body.
The 59 GM Full Sizes with an X frame did particularly poorly in overlap crashes - it would have performed better with a full head on - or a slimly later one with a permitter frame.
It's also a more likely type of crash to occur. Not many cases where one would square off the hit straight on, I'd imagine rather most cases at least one occupant is trying to avoid the crash by moving to the right.
A seatbelt wouldn't have helped much; maybe the Bel-Air driver would've been flung around a bit less, but one would still be crushed within what's effectively a giant crumple zone.
And that’s if you weren’t already dead from having your chest caved in by a non-collapsible steering column (Remember, a seat belt in this era meant a lap belt only.
The article states this was to “celebrate” the 50th anniversary of the test institute in 2009.
I agree with your point about controlling for variables but it does not seem to be the goal of the video.
The 64 sedan had 3 point lap belts and a roll cage reinforcing the passenger compartment. Not really a particularly compelling example of a typical ‘64 sedan…
Neither my 1965 coupe or 1966 convertible Mustangs came from the factory with lap belts. Both have subsequently been modified to have (2 point) lap belts, which still feel sketchy as hell to me.
Have you used aftermarket 3 point belt? A family member's Ranchero had them; the shoulder restraint slid into the lap belt near the buckle, but if you moved it would slip out. I can't imagine that being helpful in a crash, just a tethered weight to fly around.
I fitted the lap belts to my 'vert, which was already very much not-stock when I bought it, so I didn't feel bad making even more modifications (hydraulic clutch, modern T5Z trans, electronic ignition). There isn't a good, above-the-shoulder mounting point for the shoulder belt, unless you weld in a cage or mount one to an aftermarket seat.
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.
Exactly once, in order to make it look like one of the TVs on our display wall, that was very much connected to a computer, was in fact connected to an old DVD player.
The kind of people who get rims repaired rather than just buying new (no doubt based on some hand-wavy BS about safety from someone who makes a margin on the rims they sell) don't buy new rims.
I’m not sure about that. Most cars can stop way faster than they can accelerate. The differences in force would be even more extreme for front wheel drive cars where the weight transfer allows for more grip on the front wheels during braking compared to accelerating or peeling out.
If the wheel is sliding the torque on the wheel will be lower than if the tires were grippier. I guess the comparison is if braking is high (de)-acceleration than the engine. I'm thinking your idea has a lot of the same stresses as engine braking.
Crumple zones perform a very specific function in the sequence of airbag deployment (letting the sensors crash and bags deploy before the cabin starts decelerating). The speed window at which they will appreciably reduce the deceleration in the cabin is well below the speeds at which a seat-belted occupant of an airbag equipped vehicle has to worry about serious injury. Crumple zones are undeserving of the worship they get. If you want to worship something worship side curtain airbags. They save a lot more life and injury than crumple zones. Pre-tensioners are also another feature that I'd rather have than a crumple zone. As a general rule, features that directly keep the occupants from hitting things are far more beneficial to outcomes than stuff that acts upon the whole vehicle.
Secondly, it is perfectly possible to design cars that do not need tons of invasive repairs from minor fender benders. Revise bumper and front/rear cosmetic design to allow for effective bumpers (see also: the 1980s) and tune crumple zones to need higher forces to deform them so you don't have to potentially replace a whole car over a 10-15mph collision. The tradeoff here is that the speed range at which crumple zones do much would move up which is good for real world performance bad for scoring that perfect five stars in a low speed lab test that actually helps sell cars.
If you're going to make blanket assertions that safety tests are invalid and/or that the engineers designing cars don't know what they're doing, some references are probably called for.
> If you're going to make blanket assertions that safety tests are invalid and/or that the engineers designing cars don't know what they're doing, some references are probably called for.
Can you please cite where I stated, or hell, I'll settle for strongly implied, "the safety tests are invalid" or that "the engineers designing cars don't know what they're doing".
The person I am replying to made a trite low effort comment. I, without calling them out like they deserved, explained that the situation is more nuanced and their opinion is slightly off mark. You then replied with another trite low effort comment straw-manning me. FFS this is ridiculous.
OK, you said, "...which is good for real world performance bad for scoring that perfect five stars in a low speed lab test that actually helps sell cars." This strongly implies that you believe the lab tests are not valid for their purported purpose of making cars safe, but are rather more of a marketing gimmick.
You also said that designers should, "Revise bumper and front/rear cosmetic design to allow for effective bumpers (see also: the 1980s) and tune crumple zones to need higher forces to deform them so you don't have to potentially replace a whole car over a 10-15mph collision." This strongly implies that the bumpers as they are currently designed are crumpling needlessly at low speeds, and that they could be made to not do so, like the bumpers of the 1980s, without compromising safety, hence that the engineers designing them are not competent. Although admittedly in retrospect it could also be that the engineers are designing to the aforementioned tests. Regardless it's an extraordinary claim, requiring evidence.
Your first paragraph also makes a number of claims, many of which I'm sure are true. Certainly curtain air bags and seat belt pre-tensioners have been shown to save lives. I recall reading a study on the positive impacts of adding pre-tensioners to the back-seats of vehicles a while back. But again I don't see anything supporting the claim that crumple zones are ineffective, or specifically, that, "The speed window at which they will appreciably reduce the deceleration in the cabin is well below the speeds at which a seat-belted occupant of an airbag equipped vehicle has to worry about serious injury." That could be true, but it's not supported here.
The kind of person who doesn't understand that trailer tires have some pretty substantial tradeoffs in car use is not going to be loading their classic van heavily enough and then driving it fast enough to have issues with some random car tires that don't match the OEM weight rating.
