Do we really need all that safety stuff?

[Fat Charlie]

I figure the Grumman mail trucks would only be safety nightmares if they were sold as regular use vehicles. They generally move slowly and erratically, but they're highly visible and recognizable and their erratic movements are also predictable. That all screams safety to me. It's a work truck, and in its intended use it's not going to hit things very often. Other drivers can see it and predict its movements so it's not going to get hit very often. The real safety problems come from years of neglected maintenance.

Custom vehicles have their pluses, but the stripped minivan would be better overall- much better parts and service availability down the road.

[Hersbird]

When you say local postmen in all those oddball cars, they are rural carriers. Some rural carriers get assigned a postal truck but most just get paid per mile and can use whatever tickles their fancy. City carriers use the Grumman LLV, or the Ford version the FFV, some kind of minivan (white with the standard paint job), or sometimes a bigger box, step van like UPS uses. We also have a few 9 ton cabover trucks as well.

I don't think they are neglected as far as maintenance just they are plain used up. They say the transmission have been rebuilt so many times the rebuilding company can't get them in tolerances anymore and won't warranty them.
I would think a hybrid would be ideal, i just don't think most anything will stand up to the abuse a mail truck sees. The slow stop and go for hours and hours on end. On and off 100's of times a day. Bouncing around on chains in the winter and rutted potholed shoulders all summer. Shifted in and out of park maybe 1000's of times a day. To me the simpler it is the more likely it can last with minimal upkeep. You see the article Fat Charlie posted they are spending 1 billion on maintenance every year. In the spec for the next LLV they want a 5 year warranty so theoretically the 4-5 billion to replace the fleet would be recovered in less maintenance.

[Xist]

You think mail trucks see more abuse than taxis? Most taxis around here are Prii.

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by Xist

You think mail trucks see more abuse than taxis? Most taxis around here are Prii.

I would say more then Taxis. A driving route has probably 700-1300 stops. So for 7-11 hours the truck idles, accelerates 50 feet, brakes 50 feet, (no just rolling box to box) and idles some more. It is suggested to take it out of gear while at the box as well. Most of this travel is not on the nice pretty road but on the shoulder, storm drains, potholes, ruts, etc. Also 100s of turns per day full lock to full lock around parked cars. Now add snow piled up along the boxes, probably all the snow from the street. So you dive in to it, probably get stuck, rock it back and forth spinning heavy chains, and repeat 100s of times per day. Then go park it outside in -10 weather overnight and start over the next day. Then in the summer it's 100 degrees out and the whole thing just gets saturated with heat, idling endlessly. Average payload not counting driver is probably 300-800 pounds. The truck does this 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year. I get about 6 miles per gallon from a little 4 cylinder in an aluminum body and I actually turn it off for long periods during the day delivering inside business and to those large cluster boxes. The big driving routes may only go 10 miles a day but have to put 10-12 gallons in every 3rd day. A hybrid would be ideal but could it take the 1.5 million start/stops the Post Office is asking for on a 5 year warranty? After the warranty is up will it be more costly then the current simple 4 cylinder 3 speed rwd drivetrain that is costing 1 billion per year now?

[Frank Lee]

They should be fitted with Suzuki 1.0 three-bangers and fwd. New ones, with a large govt contract.

[engineered]

Yes, modern cars are much heavier than they should be. Some of that is safety (mostly reinforced passenger cabin and airbags everywhere), however more weight has gone into vehicle performance. Modern cars have much more torsional rigidity, leading to a better handling vehicle. There's also hundreds of pounds of sound deadening added (dynamat all over the passenger compartment, double layered laminated glass). And a lot of weight due to luxuries that most people think they want (electronics, comfy seats, storage, moonroof, etc).
If you want to save weight you should start with a light car (like a Subaru BRZ or Miata) then remove all sound deadening and luxuries until your at the bare metal. That should save you 300-500lbs.

The nice thing is that we live in a free society, so you're free to remove all airbags and seatbelts from your car. Depending the car, removing all airbags will save you between 100-200lbs. Removing all seatbelts would save you another 10-20lbs. If you really want all that safety gone, you could install much smaller/light brakes, plastic windows, and drill out holes in your car's structure to lighten it up at the expense of crash worthiness. The great thing is that Darwin will eventually get his man. Good luck.

See this crash test of new vs old car. Which would you rather be in? Search for this in youtube "1959 Chevrolet Bel Air vs. 2009 Chevrolet Malibu IIHS crash test"

[gasstingy]

My daughter wrecked an '85 Mustang without wearing its three point seatbelt. The car had no airbag(s). She was going approximately 45 mph when she left the road and hit a tree that was HUGE. It pushed the engine/trans out of their mounts, pushed the front left corner back to the windshield post, wrinkled the roof and both rear quarter panels.

The only damage in the cockpit of the little car was the driver side floorboard under the pedals was bent upward {her broken foot showed the effects of that} and the rim of the steering wheel was pushed to the instrument cluster when her chest smashed into the steering wheel, the column crushing everything in her chest cavity.

I would've paid everything I had accumulated to that point for airbags, if they'd have saved her life. Do I want safety equipment, absolutely. We have a 1990 Buick Century coupe without airbags or ABS at home. It's the last vehicle I will ever own without those features. We also own a 2010 Prius and 2004 Silverado both with airbags and ABS.

I'm a pretty good driver, but I make mistakes behind the wheel. Others make mistakes, too. Safety equipment might or might not save our life {especially if we neglect taking advantage of what our vehicle is already equipped with.} No safety equipment means more people die like my first-born child did.

[As a side question, does anyone know of a company that makes a retrofit ABS setup that I could buy and install?]

Sorry for such a drawn out post. I had a lot I wanted to share on this topic.

[vadimr4]

This is a great thread. As a cyclist and motorcyclist, I couldn't agree more with you that the safety features on cars are over-the-top. Government shouldn't force manufacturers to include all safety features but rather the market should dictate that. I bet there are people, like me, that would be happy to buy a small commuter car that doesn't have airbags if it meant it would reduce the purchase price by say $1k.
The thing I don't get is, if people are so concerned about safety in their cars, why do they still use their phones, text others, or even fiddle with the radio? Why don't people wear helmets, neck braces, and 5 point harnesses? We know that from the racing community, those safety features work significantly better, cost less, and weigh less than the proliferation of airbags inside the modern cars.

On that note, anyone want to buy an airbag from my '96 Nissan 200SX or '00 Chevy Metro? Contact me if you do, I'd be happy to pull them out and ship for a reasonable price.

[Fat Charlie]

I'm sorry. Losing children is about the worst thing there is.

Since their beginning, airbags have been meant to work with seatbelts. They can be even more dangerous to unbelted beople than not having airbags at all.

I was on the phone with Corporate earlier this week because a customer wanted a seatbelt extension and my catalog illustration showed one for the front seats but didn't list it. For the rears, it listed extenders with the comment that they weren't serviced. So I called to find out why, and they explained that with the seat mounted airbags, they've discontinued seatbelt extenders because they allow a little more lateral motion than the engineers consider safe. We now need our seatbelts tight to protect us from our airbags.

I don't think a retrofit kit would be something any company would touch- there are too many variables in cabin dimensions and the strength of mounting points. Then there's the impact sensors and modules involved- and look at the problems OEMs have been having lately. I can't see a company wanting to go anywhere near adding them to anything.

[euromodder]

If you still have to be convinced about the virtues of having and using seat belts, you simply haven't got the slightest clue about road or car safety.

You might just as well try to convince me the Earth is flat.