The “pretense” I was citing wasn’t to take away from the amazing strides we have made in enhancing vehicle safety. As much as I like many classic vehicles, I would drive one with the awareness that it doesn’t offer the protection of today’s cars.

The point however is that even with the remarkable safety of today’s vehicles, “safety” is relative and dependent upon the type of impact and the ability to avoid the impact. If I have to make a high speed evasive maneuver, a safe vehicle is one which has the capability to do so, and not a top-heavy SUV. If I’m going to get hit by something, there is no substitute for mass. Barrier tests are made on the assumption that I’m going to hit something, and do represent “safety” under a certain set of circumstances. Yet the vehicle’s and the driver’s ability to avoid the impact in the first place is not part of our “safety” lexicon.

So safety in the real world is related to a wide variety of characteristics which vary based on the type of incident one is trying to avoid. Given equivalent crash standards (which assume that the crash will happen), the increased safety offered by one vehicle over another is largely illusory. The single most important safety component remains the driver, and the auto companies have little to offer in that regard.

I do agree that research can identify vehicles which represent a reasonable compromise of crash survivability and crash avoidance characteristics. The marketing side of this equation has been to avoid such nuances; when do you see mainstream car companies advertising the “safety” of their braking systems? Only years after the introduction of computerized dynamic vehicle controls were they introduced on the vehicles which needed them most, the top heavy trucks and SUV’s.

For the driver who is sufficiently informed to do the research you suggest, safety is not a pretense. For most of those who are not well informed, the assumption that the biggest vehicle on the road is “safer” is just pretense.

My larger point was that if we really gave a damn about reducing fatalities and injuries, we would start to understand how accidents are avoided and quit blaming the vehicles for the accidents. I’ve seen innumerable headlines in the last few years on SUV rollovers, with the accompanying article tut-tutting over the tragedy of the vehicle rolling over. Never mentioned is the responsibility of the driver, unless they are drunk, to know the limits of his vehicle so that they do not try to yank the thing back on the road and thus put it on its lid.

It’s just curious that we have no problem with public funding for crash tests, yet little patience for public funding of driver improvement.

I imagine a “free helmet!” promotion would not help small cars, however :)

edgett :
It’s just a dangerous world out there, and the pretense of “safety” or “security” is just that.

There is no “pretense” in automobile safety. The biggest issue has to do with the ability and the force thereof of your head hitting a hard surface, which is the main thing that might kill you.

“Seat belts” help avoid that, tremendously. “Front air bags” help a substantial measure more. “Side and side curtain air bags” have added protection against hitting the side windows and pillars. There’s no pretense at all in that these systems make a huge difference in whether you will be killed or survive in an accident.

“High strength steel” reinforcement around the passenger compartment makes it far less likely to crush inward during an accident, as compared to non-reinforced vehicles. “Auxiliary” air bags, such as “knee” air bags, help protect parts of your body that have been comparably more exposed in previous vehicles.

Yes, there is a certain point where the force of an impact might overwhelm these systems, but to proclaim them as a “pretense” is ridiculous. They are saving lives every day that would be lost in vehicles without them. And people are dying every day in vehicles that lack such systems. Again, by doing a little research, you can find and purchase vehicles with substantially better capabilities of protecting you in an impact — and I simply recommend that doing so makes a whole lot of good sense.

I have missed a few deadly accident, one I went home to unplug a Notebook power pack. The delay of 15 mins so that I missed a fatal accident 30 miles away. As I lived in Northern BC then, a pick up truck skidded into a logging truck, they say due to Ice patch on the road. Is impossible to see in the dark.

Another time I didnt went fast enough so when arrived a loggin truck flipped on the side.

So for us the have nots praying to the good Lord can be a very effective way.

There are three things that I took away from this experience.

1) I would not travel 50 feet without a seat belt. Ever.

2) An investment in a well maintained vehicle that has been conservatively driven, is worth it’s weight in gold.

3) Once you get below the 2500 pound threshold in the USA, or drive a sports car with a low center of gravity), you are trading a degree of sportiness and/or frugality in exchange for a lower level of safety.

With that in mind, I still sometimes drive a scooter or an early 90’s subcompact whenever I have the desire. But the former only gets driven on winding one lane roads and the later will typically get very limited exposure to heavily traveled roads. They’re both deathtraps and I use them sparingly due to that fact.

I usually give my wife Volvo wagons to drive (she values luxury and safety over sport), or a Subaru or Saab if I get a really nice one at an auction. The only ’small car’ I’ve ever put them in was a Honda Fit.

As for teenagers, both of mine will learn on a Volvo wagon and although I’ll teach both of them to drive a stick well before they get a license, I won’t let them have one until they’re 25. What Pch said will be what I will do for my kids when it comes to paying for the vehicle.

So if we’re not in control of our destiny, and accident situations vary from the Freightliner bearing down on you (airbags are only going to make it hurt a little less as you are squashed, even in a Suburban) to a Hyundai Excel t-boning you (the Suburban and airbags would help, here), to a multi-car smash up in front of you (Porsche Cayman with the extra-good brakes is the “safe” car).

I think the idea of a safe vehicle has been way overmarketed by the insurance industry, the automobile industry and by the government. The basic assumption is that there is no other means to make accidents less frequent and less severe so we just dumb down the whole endeavor. If 55 is “safer”, why not lower speed limits to 35, which is obviously much safer. At some point, the individual must be assigned responsiblity for knowing how to drive whatever it is that he or she drives. We do this now, but don’t educate people very well in the art of driving automobiles.

Imagine how incensed we would all be if there were a huge fiery crash on the freeway involving a tanker truck, and it was determined that the driver did not hold the necessary license to operate a heavy truck. Yet every day we can read about fatalities involving SUV roll-overs and we act as if it is the manufacturer’s or the vehicle’s fault that the thing went shiny side down.

My point is that the safety of the vehicle is important and relative to the type of accident. The skill of the driver is even more important because unlike the vehicle we have the ability to adapt to a much wider variety of circumstances. So long as we sign on to the idea that vehicle safety is paramount in accident protection, we are solving only half the problem.

The idea of vehicle “safety” is similar to the idiocy which passes for “security” at the airport. If someone decides to take out a bunch of people, it takes little imagination to do so whether or not the rest of us disrobe and pass through a metal detector as we board a commercial aircraft.

It’s just a dangerous world out there, and the pretense of “safety” or “security” is just that.

edgett:

Actually, what you list IS pretty difficult, or we wouldn’t kill forty-some-thousand people on the road every year. And if you couple these challenges to actually understanding the difference in braking, handling and emergency avoidance between the various kinds of cars you might drive, there is real skill involved in navigating your way safely through traffic. Somehow we’ve decided that the accident is unavoidable, so it is best to be driving a “safe” vehicle.

Well, “no.” Dang it, NO!!

You just said it yourself — I especially despise the “soccer moms” who tailgate me in two-and-a-half-ton SUV’s, while simultaneously sipping on their Starbucks coffees and chatting endlessly on their cell phones. They utterly have no comprehension whatsoever of the physics regarding safe following distances and their ability to stop their vehicles in an emergency.

Yes, of course, obviously, no doubt whatsoever, we’re all in agreement — WE SHOULD DRIVE COMPETENTLY, give ourselves room in order to react to emergencies, and all that. I don’t dispute that for one minute, and I’ve been practicing it for my entire life.

No matter how competent and careful you are, though, YOU ARE NOT UNILATERALLY IN CONTROL OF YOUR DESTINY when you’re mixing it up with all of the other drivers on the road. And, choosing to drive a car built to the state-of-the-art in terms of air bags, high strength steel, crumple zones, and all that IS NOT INCOMPATIBLE with driving competently and safely. It just isn’t a “choose one or the other” situation!

That’s what I’m saying — drive competently and safely, but also consider choosing a vehicle that will protect you better than other vehicles that won’t protect you as well. And that choice isn’t limited to huge SUV’s or anything like that — plenty of normal, everyday cars are built to the state of the art in safety these days. Choose the side and side curtain air bags. Choose Toyota’s new knee air bag. Learn about and choose vehicles built with high-strength steel reinforcement. Pay attention to crash test ratings, and choose your vehicles in accordance to them.

It’s not that we have no driving skills — it’s about all of the other drivers that don’t. You can find vehicles in just about every segment that’ll be safer than others — and choosing the safer one just might save your life some day. Or the life of someone else in your vehicle. It should be a pretty easy choice to make when you purchase or lease a vehicle.

The only people that ever heard my mufflers were the cops who routinely gave me exhaust noise tickets.

German autobahns have a lower death rate per mile despite having dramatically increased speed differentials and some sections where it is not unusual that some traffic is moving along at 100 mph and some is moving at 60 mph or less. Germans are generally far more attentive and skillful drivers who react quickly to changing traffic conditions.

Bought an RX-8 a couple of years ago. After a lengthy, happy car search, I chose weird over cool (don’t want to get into the “my car’s better than your car”). But after driving it for some months, I found that SUVs, minivans, trucks, just don’t see me. Merging, cutting me off, etc. So, my lack of concern for safety features was reversed.

Now, I really appreciate the full compliment of airbags. I actually bragged about the RX receiving the highest ever “roll-over” rating. But, in the end, there is no more important safety feature than an observant (paranoid?) driver, and a car that can get you out of trouble…but fast.

A good example 20 some yrs ago was a relative who used to drive a Buick Le Sabre, she did well until she changed to a Civic. Only few wks later she got banged up. And that was the pre-cell phone days. The problem was any whip lash do get lasting results, much longer than u have received any settlement.

Can call me a Luddite, my 126 do gave me a high margin of perceptional safety.

You only live once.

Oh, you might not drive foolishly, but just look around you — you are in a sea of drivers who apparently never, ever put their cell phones down when they’re in their giant behemoths. If you were “swimming at a crowded beach” instead, all of the other swimmers would be “sharks.”

If that’s not bad enough, now we have kids typing out text messages while they’re driving. I swear to you, if I ever get creamed by some punk typing out “What’s up, dude?”, I will get the baseball bat I carry in my trunk out, and beat him to a bloody pulp.

Anyway. I know a co-worker who lost her father in what could have been “just a normal traffic accident,” just a few blocks from his home. Her mother was driving the family’s brand-new Ford Five Hundred (this was about two years ago or so), and he was sitting in the passenger seat when they got t-boned by a Ford Expedition. Probably around 35-40 MPH. No side air bags of any kind. “They were optional, and we didn’t get them.” They had to cut him out of the car, and he had a laundry list of broken bones — just about every one that you could mention. Plus a bunch of internal injuries, which he finally succumbed to after about six months, most of which was in hospitals.

If that car had had side and side curtain air bags, he would have dusted off some minor injuries, and lived to tell about it. Also, a number of new cars are made with “high strength steel,” which sounds kind of comic-book corny, but it’s a steel alloy that is MUCH stronger than the usual steel cars have been built with — in fact, the usual “jaws of life” tool isn’t strong enough to cut through it. Safer cars now have veritable “roll cages” built all around the passenger compartment with the stuff.

Yes, “learn how to drive.” Gosh, it’s not really all that difficult: Just SLOW DOWN, pay attention to everything around you, and BACK OFF from the car in front of you, and give yourself enough time to safely react to whatever happens. That’s most of the job, right there.

Unfortunately, a lot of the drivers around you just won’t be doing that kind of thing. But you CAN find vehicles that will do a far better job of holding up to impacts than others, and will soften the impact to your body with airbags — and I’m afraid that the smallest, most fuel-efficient models usually won’t do as well as most larger vehicles.

It is veritably the difference between life and death — YOUR life.

Well, a Model T Roadster fits the bill. Or an old Japanese pickup. Passive safety? Fugeddaboutit.

Ditto on open container laws – the key is to change the container. I’m not paying $6 for a beer at the restaurant when I can drink one on the way there for $1. One beer puts me at about .02 BAC – less affected than all the nimrods yakking on their cell phones.

If I’m a bad person, I can live with that.

The relative crash worthiness of multiple vehicles is in fact quantifiable. The methods are not perfect and different tests give slightly different results, but in a crash the 15 year old Geo Metro is many times more likely to kill it’s occupants than is a similar aged Volvo 240. The rate at which various vehicles are involved in accidents is also thoroughly documented. It is debatable how much of the data is due to the vehicles and how much it says about the buyers, but the data is there. A new Corvette is much more likely to end up in an accident than is a new minivan.

The naysayers remind me of all the sturm-und-drang debate about seat belts in the 1970s. Countless old school die-hards used the same kind of arguments as to why they refused to wear the darned things that we are seeing here today in a slightly different context. I was just a teen then and had many a frustrating conversation with those of my parents generation about the need to wear seat belts and the wisdom of recycling soda bottles. Moms caught on pretty quick, some dads … not so fast.

I do think that people over exaggerate the need for the safest possible vehicle. The way they talk, you would think that high speed collisions are inevitable for every single person. From what I can tell, the likelihood of a collision where the difference between a Fit and a Suburban saves your life is extremely low. If you walk outside you could be hit by lightning, but we bet on those odds, just like many other things in our lives. I will also say that I have had an instance in my life where had I not been driving an agile car, I would have hit a full grown deer at 65 mph, and another where if I had been driving a vehicle with a high center of gravity, it would have rolled over, turning a situation that was very minor into one that would be very dangerous.