How do you celebrate 50 years of vehicle safety improvements?

[strawman]

You crash an old car into a new car:

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/17/video-iihs-celebrates-50th-anniversary-by-crashing-modern-malib/



According to the sensors on the crash test dummies, the dummy in the old car would have died instantly.

The dummy in the new car would have hurt, possibly broken, his left foot or leg.

-Adam

 

[Silvanesti]

daaaaym I thought the older cars were built with a lot of steel and shit. It crumbled instantly.

 

[Soliloquy]

Somebody's PR department has their head in the right place.

Hey! Everyone else in corporate America! We need more things going splat, crack, or kaboom!

 

[Silver Jelly]

Cool!

 

[strawman]

daaaaym I thought the older cars were built with a lot of steel and shit. It crumbled instantly.

Well sure, the old frames were excellent at transferring the force of the impact right to your body!

Fortunately someone thought about that and said, "Hey, what if we absorb the force of the impact in the frame and body, rather than in the human?"

-Adam

 

[Pojodan]

daaaaym I thought the older cars were built with a lot of steel and shit. It crumbled instantly.

Well sure, the old frames were excellent at transferring the force of the impact right to your body!

Fortunately someone thought about that and said, "Hey, what if we absorb the force of the impact in the frame and body, rather than in the human?"

-Adam[/QUOTE]

Another side to that is that older cars are made of very rigid frames. Thus, lower speed impacts yielded far less damage than on modern cars.

In high speed impacts, however, that stiffness leads to breaking, rather than bending. In this case the body of the car snapped and sent the stearing collum straight through the driver's chest, followed shortly by the front end of the other car.

 

[Dusty668]

at 1:29, how about those huge panels of windshield glass going flying around looking for someone to chop up?

 

[strawman]

Some auto enthusiasts located the original owner of the bel air:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/ask-the-best-and-brightest-is-this-the-bel-air-the-iihs-destroyed/

They point out that even though the older car weighed a few hundred pounds more, many of the welds didn't hold, and the A-Pillar (the diagonal posts on either side of the windshield) basicly sheared like tinfoil.

Those posts form part of a cage that protects the drive, but they weren't designed that way back then.

Most of the posts, however, lament the loss of another "precious" part of our history.

Interesting info though. It had a straight 6 rather than V8, so not quite as much force in the impact as might have been.

-Adam

 

[Chazwozel]

daaaaym I thought the older cars were built with a lot of steel and shit. It crumbled instantly.

Old cars are death traps in accidents. No where near the research into impacts as modern cars. That's why I just smirk at car shows when some asshole says, "they don't make em like this anymore." Which, of course, implies that the old car is of better quality than a newer car. I usually say, I'm glad they don't make em like this anymore.