Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
I made the tally and I cherish those safety features, I don't mind spending a few drops of fuel extra to carry them around.
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Weight will also increase your stopping distance... If you added up all the weight of all the safety components (including safety cells, deformable structures etc - keep in mind a heavier car then needs a heavier engine, gearbox, brakes and so on), there's probably as much as 50% of a cars mass. More mass= more accidents (partly why SUVs are crashed so often).
Example, a Metro weighed in at ~700kg, while current cars of that size are often weigh over 1000. That's before we account for the way modern vehicles are built, where weight is carefully kept to a minimum.
If you built a Metro with modern techniques (to the same crash standards), it could weigh as little as 500kg, and even less if you went with some of the more exotic materials that are now creeping in.
A 500kg car would stop in far less distance than a 1000kg one, and if you consider that 5 metres of stopping distance is the difference between stopping safely and having a severe accident, it's hard to say that safety technology does anything more than make you feel safe (which probably makes you less safe).