Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Lee
Stupid thing is, Tempos are fully optioned, fully functional, not stripped down miniscule sports cars, and they are made with a big *** old cast iron block and heads, and I strongly suspect much heavier gauge sheet metal than Hondas and whatnot, AND they have 5 mph bumpers!  If the 4-5 place OLD SCHOOL Tempo can weigh in at under 2500, I don't see why any other self-respecting family car CAN'T. |
The non-metalic materials in new cars are very heavy all the dampening and crash crumpling materials are not light, My company has a new truck that gets plastic composite outrigger pads because they don't rust and slide in the box in one nice square package, sadly the composite outrigger pads weigh double what old steel jobbers did, pain to lift into place also.
My main concern was with calling a Volvo with over double the usable space of a modus a tank. The tank of the two is the Modus, it is built much more stought and heavy while still being small.
And fixating on one model car is also troubling to me, people become miopic and fail to see that all cars universally of one age versus another can't really be compared in that way. There are a variety of new cars that handle poorly, have respectable crash numbers but I would estimate are easier to enter into an accident driving. There are older cars that are much easier to navigate, weigh less and would be better at avoiding an accident.
Also the inevitable end to all this would be like the end all solution of the 70's test crash cars sanctioned by our government that were designed to be crash ready whereby you could never die in a crash. They weighed in excess of 4 tons and looked a lot like a tank. Perhaps everyone should drive these around so they can crash into each other safely at 70mph?
I'm uncertain I really want to go into that place. At some point there needs to be a line and the fact that there are 6million accidents a year, 30% are alcohol related, 30% involve an injury and only .05% (give or take are fatal on the road an equal number are fatal up a year later from dying of injuries from such things as safety equipment but we will ignore that) and of that .05% fatality rate roughly 40% are alcohol related should be a much more telling set of data or provide a better direction as to what we should be doing to prevent automotive fatalities. Also of note of the .05% fatality rate roughly 15% are pedestrians not people in cars.
I think you can draw your own conclusion of what would be more effective at preventing a large number of the existing vehicle accidents and fatalities
I would also argue poorly designed intersections and roads cause a fair number of accidents. Cities not designed for people to be able to navigate their person safely also cause trouble. Around here stopped cars having to cross divided freeways to get across seems to cause a fair number of accidents.