small car worries?

[Matt Timion]

I drive one of the smallester cars in America, at least that I've seen. I often refer to my n600 as a "motorcycle with walls." In reality my car is powered by a motorycycle engine and IS a motorcycle on with walls.

I full recognize that if I get hit at high speeds I probably won't survive, unless I'm one of those rare instances that get launched from my car and land on a truck transporting matresses or something.

Anyway, my solution to this is:

Don't drive my n600 on the freeway.

Not only does it have a max speed of 70-75mph, but there is no crossbar on the doors to take the brunt of the impact.

That's about it. I only drive my n600 around town, which makes my max speed around 45mph. At 45 MPH I am able to actually dodge accidents if they arise.

However if I were in a Metro, mini cooper, or CRX I'd feel safe. Those things have nice crumple zones.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Eh, I figure the smaller the better. Especially wrt bikes because they're so manueverable. Supposedly it's roughly twice as dangerous per mile traveled on a bike compared to a car, but the assumption was that only ~1 in 280 people bicycle, and that those people only bicycle 30 miles per year, which seems really, really, really low. I'm guessing that it's much safer to bike than drive assuming an accurate number of vehicle miles traveled. In terms of risks to your life, even if bicycling is twice as dangerous as driving per mile, if you do it consistently your risk of dying from heart disease or other obesity related health problems supposedly drops by a fact of ten! If anything, lack of physical fitness kills more people than anything else, and is what we should really be worried about wrt to not dying.

[psyshack]

Originally Posted by Matt Timion

I drive one of the smallester cars in America, at least that I've seen. I often refer to my n600 as a "motorcycle with walls." In reality my car is powered by a motorycycle engine and IS a motorcycle on with walls.

I full recognize that if I get hit at high speeds I probably won't survive, unless I'm one of those rare instances that get launched from my car and land on a truck transporting matresses or something.

Anyway, my solution to this is:

Don't drive my n600 on the freeway.

Not only does it have a max speed of 70-75mph, but there is no crossbar on the doors to take the brunt of the impact.

That's about it. I only drive my n600 around town, which makes my max speed around 45mph. At 45 MPH I am able to actually dodge accidents if they arise.

However if I were in a Metro, mini cooper, or CRX I'd feel safe. Those things have nice crumple zones.

Drive that Honda on the freeway. The door intrusion bar would be needed more on city streets then a fwy/hwy.

I was raised in small cars. Have driven them all my life. I have no fear in compacts, subcompacts or micro's.

This dosent mean I dislike sleds. I would really like to have a Chrysler 300E Hemi car with a super charger on it. But alas I will prob. never own a huge cool sedan again.

Ive thought about pulling all the air bags out of my Civic and selling them on E-bay. Along with all sorts of other things that weight the car down.

Saftey and all is cool. But what we need in America is for folks to just try and drive right.

[schmeep]

thanks for your insights and opinions!

i read an article a while back that said the safest vehicle is a large car (chrysler 300E hemi might fit the bill), apparently suv's are not any safer than a small car because of their tendency to roll over, but i think they definitely give the occupants a sense of security because of their size, which might make them more brave (or stupid)

what pisses me off is that car companies aren't mandated to make their cars safer, which they could easily do. i dont' know how many of you have seen this test crash of a smart car at 70mph into a concrete barrier:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/60538/smart_car_crash/

if this car can have such a rigid safety cell, why don't ALL cars have that, at least surrounding the passenger compartment?

[The Toecutter]

if this car can have such a rigid safety cell, why don't ALL cars have that, at least surrounding the passenger compartment?

To shave a few hundred bucks off the manufacturing cost and place the gains into profit margins.

[philmcneal]

However if I were in a Metro, mini cooper, or CRX I'd feel safe. Those things have nice crumple zones.

this reminded me of a story about someone dissing the CRX's safety because he was in a low speed accident and his rear was crumbled like nothing. Even though that crumble was designed to be crushed so that the force energy from the impact won't reach the driver. Unfortnately the driver took this the wrong way and went , "man any faster, and I could have been crushed like my rear!"

[schmeep]

What's the big deal about safety equipment anyway? Is everybody planning on going out and getting crushed?

driving is a chaotic business, i'm sure no one plans on getting into accidents, but they sure have a way of happening even if people practice defensive driving because there are a lot of dorks on the road who don't.
auto accidents are a big killer and i think we should be taking safety equipment as well as driving skills seriously.

this reminded me of a story about someone dissing the CRX's safety because he was in a low speed accident and his rear was crumbled like nothing. Even though that crumble was designed to be crushed so that the force energy from the impact won't reach the driver. Unfortnately the driver took this the wrong way and went , "man any faster, and I could have been crushed like my rear!"

but there is a limit to how effective a crumple zone is, and the smaller the car, the smaller the crumple zone.

[ketel0ne]

I have no concerns with small cars these days. Worst wrecks I have ever seen involved large cars with bench seats from the 70's and 80's. I once saw a telephone pole split a olds 88 down the center. Oddly that same turn 20 years later is what is safer not the cars. You can not get to that curve doing more than about 35mph with the lights and stop signs in place within 1/8 of a mile to it. The whole driving landscape has changed and with it so has car safety.

[Hot Georgia]

My Civic has an exellent safety rating, and safety was #1 in my automobile choices, 2nd was economy.

But I can tell you I feel 100% safer if in our Grand Caravan. Actually it's our 2nd Caravan, the 1st was totalled at only 18,000 miles by a compact pick-up truck which hit the passenger side sliding door going excess of 60 (In a 45 zone). It pushed us 15 feet down the road and turned us 90 degreese.
My son of 7 years old at the time who was next to the door only bit his lip and was our only injury.

Poor van-
The floor was buckled like an accordian and made the seats skew. Both side doors wrecked. The roof twisted and cracked the windshield. Much more damage. Suprising the large sheet side glass was still intact.
The driver of the pickup truck suffered a number of spranes and his knee with both hands were broken and hit his head on the glass. His whole front clip was crushed.
Both vehicles were written off by our insurance companies.

I thank God we're all fine now.

Still, if I'm in my Civic 1st in line at a light at a busy intersection the fleeting thought passes through my mind of a crazy wild speeder in a large vehicle loosing control and creaming my side.
I can also tell you that I don't just pass through a green light without consiously scanning cross traffic.

The way I see it is if it's train vs semi-truck, the semi-truck looses. If it's semi-truck vs SUV, mainly SUV looses. SUV vs small car...well you get my picture.
Still I don't think it's something to obsess over.

[GasSavers_Randy]

The IIHS has stats on what vehicles tend to kill their drivers (in Status Report 40-3). It's not as simple as bigger=safer. Smaller cars often are safer in real life, probably because drivers are the most important safety feature of any car.

After I got rear-ended in my Accord, I really wanted a Crown Vic something huge like that (I've never felt comfortable in trucks/SUVs, even my F250). But it went away in a few weeks and I was back to liking small cars.

People probably care too little about traffic deaths. It's been five years since the retina-searing horror of almost 3000 dead, but nobody much cares about the daily traffic reports adding up to 200000+ dead since then. We could do a lot to stop it, too... but it's not a big priority. The best way to avoid it is to drive less, and if you do drive carefully... single-vehicle crashes are still the biggest killer.