Do you buckle up? (picture link follows)

It's at about 1:20 into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcBoVgyKjH8 you see a great explanation of what's up with quality from China.

Don't have an accident and you'll be OK.
Bob

PS. Good to read that most buckle up.

Is why with the space in the wheelwells and sides of trunks, they don't use some light weight hard setting spray foam that would absorb some of the impact. Seems wasted space otherwise.

Pretty good idea though, but sure need to be very fast setting. All those airbags going off were hilarious.

Unless you want to put something in the trunk?

I like building all cars to NASCAR specs, no good in the snow though.

I was thinking about how much safer a car is with a skilled driver behind the wheel of a car that's built to be stable and handle well in tough situations. Cars have gotten better but the older ones were little more than boats on the highway. Some were all engine on poor suspensions. It's no wonder they crashed so often. The safety standards are designed around the concept that wrecks are going to happen rather than designing them so that wrecks can be avoided...if the driver is half way competent, anyway.

Not all were boats. Big engines? Quite a few. Not all though.
I think that because until the oil industry did a fake gas crisis in 72 that most drivers that survived the teen macho years were motor tuned and had less accidents per driver than today when the only criteria is to know that drinking and driving is against the law.

Don't forget the huge change in traffic density. I can't offer statistics with which to compare then versus now. I started driving in the '60s and remember very well the beginnings of preparing the highway system to better accommodate the growing number of vehicles and developing new road surface materials to handle speed. I also remember the emergence of the US "muscle cars" which attracted the younger crowd. These cars were built to go fast from stop light to stop light but couldn't keep up with a VW Beetle when turning a corner. It was still a time of bias ply tires and leaf spring suspensions. The older folks craved larger cars with strong motors but marshmallow suspensions so their kidneys didn't shake loose. Bias ply tires were rough on the innards if the roads weren't entirely smooth. They'd also cause loss of control at lower speeds. These were the boats I was thinking of. It was marketing that drove the auto industry and not engineering. If you're old enough, you might remember that these cars seemed not even designed to outlast one's payment book. Rust within the first 2 years?

There have been improvements brought upon by foreign competition and vehicles are also designed to handle better but with some sacrifices. Look at what's called a "full sized" sedan today versus the equivalent 50-60 years ago.

As for safety features, we seem to be concentrating on marketing a greater number of air bags as being a safety feature...all-the-while adding distracting technology to the interior in an effort to incorporate that same distracting technology we see in the hands of pedestrians. We've seen people walking into water fountains and light poles with their heads down and focused on their hand held devices. Check your rear view mirror at a traffic light these days and try to see the face of the driver behind you. There's a good chance all you'll see is their hair. Today's biggest traffic safety problem isn't a shortage of air bags in vehicles but a proliferation of "air heads" behind the wheel.

I pretty much agree!
Up through the 40s it was get the family from A to Z in better comfort than the buggy. Along came the 40s and bigger engines to move the car with less effort and the "boys" started tinkering, faster we want to go.
The 50s brought Detroit looking at what the rodders were doing and decided to enter the game. Engines became more powerful and were easier to make even faster, suspensions improved for more stability. (The boat was also available).
The 60s brought the political power of the afraid to go fast and Detroit started to pull back from the appearance of speed. If the car was big and heavy you could have that huge 500+ cube inch motor and insurance was cheaper. If a small light car could only have a small engine.
Still the rodders came to the rescue and shoehorned the V8s into the Tempests so Detroit came out with the Mid sized with the the smaller V8s.
Then came the 70s, 80s, ECT... and increasing legislation restricting the swapping of or changing performance of the engine. Afraid it would ruin the environment.Never thinking it was the rodders and racers that were making the cars run more fuel efficient.

If you've ever traveled for long periods on snow that accumulates in the wheelwells, you'd be glad for it too. I had an experience in a Colorado winter in which my cars front wheelwells were so impacted with snow that I couldn't turn the steering wheel. I thought something had frozen the mechanical linkage until I was able to stop and get out. I suspect that, had I crashed the car trying to turn it, that snowpack might have saved me.

or college project about crashworthy bumpers.
The kids made one out of two aluminum I-beams that fit over each other. The inside was filled with bags of popcorn. Not only did it work but I'm told it was entertaining to watch.

put the crushable material up front.

Funny thing at church today.

Preacher was talking about how all things decay in this world, comparing to the time to come when decay would be no more, life instead of death and aging, etc. Something didn't make sense to me, so I leaned over to the wife and asked,

"What does the preacher, having some odd decay problem of rusty iron caused by salt dropped in his britches, have to do with any of this?!"

Wife "He said bridges!"

Me "Yes, his britches!"

Wife "No, He said bridges as in overpasses!!"

Me "Oh, now I get it"

Meanwhile, behind me, both ladies in the house, are crying their eyes out over some Family channel movie called "The Notebook" with James Garner in it. Why did I get up from that nap? For this?! Thankfully, it just ended and out come their tissues.....

Something went through the hood, cowl and collapsed the windshield up to the roof.

The pillar and upper corner of the roof on the driver's side are torn up. Someone going through or hitting the windshield just simply does NOT do that sort of damage. I know from first hand experience. I had a gal broad-side my first Bronco (an '87 4x4). She was going about 43 mph. I don't know what she was driving. Looked like it may have been a Saturn or something like that. She hit me hard enough to break my front axle and fold my floorboard up lengthwise the truck (not to mention all the other damage that was done that totaled the truck). Anyway, neither she nor her passenger were wearing their seat belts. They both hit the windshield. There were not holes through their windshield although there were these "crazed/shattered dents" where each of them hit. Eventhough I was not wearing my seat-belt that time I walked away from that accident with little more than a couple of bruises. Something a LOT more than that happened to the car in Bob's original post. Today's glass has several sheets of plastic in it (which makes it safety glass) that makes it very difficult to do what was done to that car. I'm thinking that the jaws of life had something to do with some of the damage to that car as it sits. How else would they have gotten the victims out in the shape that thing is in?

They were down the road a piece unconscious after the impact with their scalp nearly torn off. Car door was closed. Since no one else was in the car, no jaws required.

What a way to fly.
Bob

Then that car must have been traveling at an extremely high rate of speed.

The damage that I described above must just point to how cheaply cars are made today.

BTW - There are no remnants of the air bag visible from the angle that photo was taken. Did the air bag deploy?

I didn't post that due to the stains on that area. No word yet on speed but your guess is as good as mine. It was high.

Is how they went through the windshield gap and not be smashed on the hood under what ever they hit.

We had sleet, freezing rain and snow yesterday. I was up between 2-5am and in the middle of typing something when the power went out exactly at 4:14am. In a half minute there was a switchover somewhere and the power came back on, things beeping as they started, etc. Thankfully my 5 minute auto saves didn't leave me too far off from where I was in the document.

So, leave out for church this morning, hit a detour sign. Took me 10 minutes out of my way, so late to church by a couple minutes. I looked down the road a bit and there was a smashed up car, having clipped a phone pole, still off side of the road, and electric crews there replacing the pole and fixing the lines. I'm just hoping it wasn't my sunday newspaper person who did that.

Their scalp was peeled back, not off. EMT rolled it into place and later at the hospital they cleaned and stapled it back into place.

I read you loud and clear.
Bob

It's been proven that belts save lives. This is taking personal freedom a step too far.
Dafydd.

I'm thinking of quitting Wales and opening a windsreen replacement business in Maine.
Dafydd.

and ending excuses for issuance of tickets impeding that freedom to choose.

in the UK you have to wear a belt everywhere. No individual county can change that. Just imagine a family from a state next door fully belted up in a pile up. Who killed whom? I know nothing about US law and insurance policies but it bears thinking about.
Dafydd.
l

to prevent the family bread winner from doing stupid things that might cause personal injury.

That's the difference between the US and the UK. We are talking about the US here, NOT the UK.

We have more freedoms built into our Constitution than the UK ever had. That is why people "quit" the UK and came to the New World to begin with.