Quote:
Originally Posted by some_other_dave
I wish I could remember where I read this, but evidently if you check over the statistics our "safer cars" don't actually seem to have changed the fatality rates (per mile traveled). Not once you factor speeds and a few other things out of it. The theory espoused in the (article? book?) I was reading was that this was due to people driving to a "level of perceived risk".
So today's cars, with crumple zones and power disk ABS brakes and airbags and so on simply make people "push harder", leave less room to react, and so on. Which fits with my own (very unscientific!) observations pretty well.
-soD
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werd, I know my girlie drives her quiet, isolating, no road feedback TL a hell of a lot faster than I feel comfortable with - when she was driving my old Trooper she drove it slow and carefully even though it was nowhere near stock and absolutely not the handling disaster that stock Troopers are.
People drive as fast as they feel safe driving, regardless of the speed limit or the road conditions. If you completely isolate them from the sensation of speed, they will continue accelerating until they feel like they're going somewhere. I think electric, or non-internal combustion cars will only increase this behavior.
