BF2S Forums Krauthammer hits a homerun

Large cars aren't necessarily safer, and those that are safer are typically only so for the occupant, at the expense of other road users, and the overall safety of the road.

Mr opposing view is here... lol...  no matter what... rain...shine...

I compared medium/full size cars because that's what I prefer to drive.  If it was just me, I might consider driving a coupe or a small sedan but I have a family and need the space a larger vehicle provides.  V6 vehicles give me the most bang for my buck right now.  Since I don't want a car payment, I pay cash for my vehicles and that means my vehicles are always used and old enough that they don't have the new safety features.  In light of that, I won't compromise my family's safety with a small car.  My car gets mileage just as good as those listed above with the exception of the Civic and Corolla, even though it has 211K miles on it.  I’ve put 35K miles on it since I purchased it for $2,000 4 years ago.  My SUV does not get mileage as good as my car because it's geared differently and has a larger V6 engine so I drive that as little as I can.  My wife and I are both employed right now so we need 2 vehicles. 

In my view, there's much more to be considered than just fuel economy when purchasing a car.  Ease of maintenance, interior space, seasonal road conditions, and safety are my considerations.  The domestic cars I purchase are much easier to maintain myself without needing a repair shop and I have family members who are qualified to take care of the more difficult maintenance for me.  Living in the Midwest and I want a vehicle capable of getting through winter weather conditions easily.  When the roads are not plowed yet, you have a good chance of getting stuck with a little car.  My larger car and SUV go through it no problem. 

Smaller cars are all well and good but they don't provide what I need in a vehicle right now and most of them don't get significantly better gas mileage than my current vehicles.

Stingray24 wrote:

This columnist makes some excellent points.  It’s obvious The Dems don’t care what happens to US business or jobs as long as they can put another feather in their hats from the envirowackos.  Give me a safe larger car or truck that gets 20-30mpg any day over a little jellybean deathtrap that supposedly gets 40mpg.  I’ve only been in 3 accidents in 12 years of driving since I’ve avoided many more with quick reflexes and defensive driving.  My larger vehicle saved my life in 2 of the 3 accidents.  I wouldn’t be here to make this thread had I been driving a little Prius, Yaris, or something like it.  I'd be part of the twisted heap of what used to be cheap plastic and "crumple zones".  I can hardly fit in those cars already, let alone if they start crumpling.  Gas mileage isn’t everything.

Give me a unibody frame over a shitty American made box frame anyday. American car manufacturers have been behind the times ever since stock racing stopped being stock. And if you're having trouble fitting into the cars why don't you try buying a foreign made car like the Scion XB, looks small on the outside but it can hold five sixfoot 200 pound males very comfortably. The sucker is huge on the inside, manuverable like no other, and has pickup to spare up until 85 mph. Oh yeah, and did I mention it's light with great gas milage? We've been getting Ford engineers stopping on the street to ask us questions about the specs, and they're always just a little bit surprised to see it measure up everywhere their POS cars can't.

In short, holding up American made SUVs and Pickups as a bastion of all that is good and right with the world is perhaps the least reasonable comparison in the automobile industry.

Last edited by jonsimon (2007-07-01 10:55:29)

Turquoise wrote:

Fair points...  I realize that midsize sedans are much better suited for families.  So yeah, I know where you're coming from.

I guess my point is...  increasing fuel standards should be done so that we can keep up with the rest of the world in terms of fuel economy.  It doesn't mean making cars less safe, but it does mean that we might have to acknowledge that American automakers are less willing to up their standards due to the costs of unionized labor.

I completely support increasing fuel standards, but not on the aggressive time frame that's being proposed.  It seems a gradual increase would be better for the consumer and the auto industry.  Otherwise, too much of the cost of developing better fuel economy will be passed on to the consumer. 

Seeing the government get involved is something I don’t look forward to.  I’d rather let market demand move US companies towards improved mileage.  It’s not as if US carmakers are doing nothing.  Flex fuel vehicles and electric cars in development are evidence that US carmakers are working towards better fuel economy and use of  alternate fuel sources.  GM has a pretty sweet looking electric car.   

http://www.egmcartech.com/2007/01/08/gm … ctric-car/

Stingray24 wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

Fair points...  I realize that midsize sedans are much better suited for families.  So yeah, I know where you're coming from.

I guess my point is...  increasing fuel standards should be done so that we can keep up with the rest of the world in terms of fuel economy.  It doesn't mean making cars less safe, but it does mean that we might have to acknowledge that American automakers are less willing to up their standards due to the costs of unionized labor.

I completely support increasing fuel standards, but not on the aggressive time frame that's being proposed.  It seems a gradual increase would be better for the consumer and the auto industry.  Otherwise, too much of the cost of developing better fuel economy will be passed on to the consumer. 

Seeing the government get involved is something I don’t look forward to.  I’d rather let market demand move US companies towards improved mileage.  It’s not as if US carmakers are doing nothing.  Flex fuel vehicles and electric cars in development are evidence that US carmakers are working towards better fuel economy and use of  alternate fuel sources.  GM has a pretty sweet looking electric car.   

http://www.egmcartech.com/2007/01/08/gm … ctric-car/

http://www.egmcartech.com/wp-content/up … cept_4.jpg

That thing looks beefed

Good lord, is everyon's e-peen still ok?

I guess this is time for the paramedic to jump in. I'm going to be generous, and guess I've seen 300x more mvc's than anyone else here, since that's what I do for a living.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Bertster7 wrote:

Do you know that most big American cars get very low safety ratings in Europe?

It's true. None have 5 star ratings.

At the same time, whenever I see massive accidents over here, it's usually the hulking metal vehicles I see with minimally-injured passengers. We have oil, but we'd rather use everyone else's first. Warcraft 2 strategy!

Yes, but what happens when two Ford Excursions run into each other?

I drive a Saab now, and drove a Volvo before, so I am not too worried about a car accident injuring me.

Saabs, nice cars. Volvos, nice as well. If you're hit by something bigger, you're toast in the Saab. The Volvo, however, presents a most interesting problem. You will most likely survive the collision. However, if you are injured, you are also way more likely to die, stuck in the car, as we dismantle it piece by piece. Volvos are the only vehicles I've met that the A and B pillars can't be cut in fewer than 5 strokes from the power cutters. Allegedly, Hurst now makes a cutter that'll do it in one attempt, but the bastard's like $40K. Don't drive a Volvo.

And what happens if two excusions hit each other? I've seen it. Two lane state highway, closing speed of 110. Neither truck had passenger compartment intrusion. One of the passengers was ejected and killed, as he was not wearing a seatbelt. The other 5 in that wreck walked to the ambulance under their own power. There were the usual airbag scrapes, a few cuts from flying glass, contusions from the seatbelts, but other that that, the people were OK. And remember, this is the same as if an excursion had hit a wall at 110.

PureFodder wrote:

This seems to be one area where people make some very unscientific conclusions.
Big, heavy, solid, metal car = hard to deform.
Small lightweight, plastic, deformable car = easier to deform.
Lower kinetic energy + higher energy absorbing crumple zones = slower impact and less deceleration for the occupants.
Lower deceleration = less damage to you.
The reason us Europeans like our nice destructible cars is we appear to more readily appreciate the idea of crumple zones etc. We don't care if the car's a write off, that's what insurance is for. It's our safety that's important.

I'm sure your kids will be just thrilled about inheriting a slightly damaged car......

If you skipped physics class

As it turns out, I did attend physics. In high school, and then cal-based in college. And since then, I've been to 2, week long seminars on the physics and mechanics of vehicle collisions. Your logic, however, has a fundamental flaw. You are assuming that most injuries in collisions come from deceleration. I disagree. REAL injuries (of which whiplash is not one) come from passenger compartment intrusion, and ejection from the vehicle.

Crumple zones are an idea that works great in the lab, and not so hot in practice. In practice, a crumple zone is space for the engine block to travel and accelerate before it smashes its way into the passenger compartment. If you have a big, heavy frame, it's not going to deform, and the likelyhood of such an intrusion is GREATLY reduced.

I hate to bust your bubble, but the automakers and insurance companies like crumple zones becuase it makes it easier to repair, rather than write off, a vehicle involved in a low to medium speed collision. If the frame doesn't get bent, the insurance company doesn't have to write the big check, and the automaker gets to sell some parts.

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

Ahhh, another product of the US educational system I see.  It takes less work to move an object of less weight.  All things being equal, a vehicle of 2000K pounds will get better mileage than one of 2500 pounds.  Yes, there is engine technology, etc., but the fact of the matter is....the Japanese are kicking the US auto makers ass is this respect.

And another fundamentally faulty assumption. All things are not, as it turns out, equal. A turbo, for example, generally adds 150 lbs of mass, but so greatly increases the horsepower and torque that the vehicle with which it is equiped gets better mileage.

Do Japanese cars generally get better mileage? Yes. Are there American cars that get better mileage than their Japanese counterparts? Yes as well.

When it comes right down to it, people pick cars on design and features. Mileage is simply a part of the equation.

Bubbalo wrote:

Large cars aren't necessarily safer, and those that are safer are typically only so for the occupant, at the expense of other road users, and the overall safety of the road.

Other then your first phrase, I agree entirely. A larger car is indeed safer for the occupant, as opposed to the other person involved. But I'm selecting the car that's safest for ME. I really couldn't care less about everyone else on the road. If someone hits me, and I live, and she dies, well, that's the way it goes. Otherwise, I'd be paying for airbags, and a seatbelt-ignition interlock for everyone.

Turquoise wrote:

There's a good reason why compacts generally sell better than SUVs these days: fuel economy.  The Japanese really are the best when it comes to small cars with good mileage.  It's actually hard to even find a Japanese vehicle with anything larger than a 6 cylinder engine, but maybe they realize that, in the long run, fuel economy matters more to the average consumer.

You may feel safer in a larger, more powerful vehicle, but if another large vehicle hits you, you're still in bad shape.  An SUV doesn't generally protect you much against the impact of another SUV.  I think the average driver understands this, which is why more and more people are buying small, fuel-efficient vehicles.

In the end, what makes you far safer than just driving a large vehicle are good reflexes and safe driving habits.  You don't have to drive a Hummer to be safe, but you do have to drive a compact car to save more cash when it comes to gas consumption.

While these are good points, I will disagree with the section I bolded. The more metal you have around you, the safer the vehicle is. All the airbags in the world aren't going to save your life when your engine block ends up in the driver's seat. Yes, I have seen this. But never in an SUV. Generally only in small trucks, and small cars.

jonsimon wrote:

Give me a unibody frame over a shitty American made box frame anyday. American car manufacturers have been behind the times ever since stock racing stopped being stock. And if you're having trouble fitting into the cars why don't you try buying a foreign made car like the Scion XB, looks small on the outside but it can hold five sixfoot 200 pound males very comfortably. The sucker is huge on the inside, manuverable like no other, and has pickup to spare up until 85 mph. Oh yeah, and did I mention it's light with great gas milage? We've been getting Ford engineers stopping on the street to ask us questions about the specs, and they're always just a little bit surprised to see it measure up everywhere their POS cars can't.

In short, holding up American made SUVs and Pickups as a bastion of all that is good and right with the world is perhaps the least reasonable comparison in the automobile industry.

You can have your unibody frame. Keep it. You're not safer, no matter what your manufacturer told you.

And I find it interesting that you bring up the Scion xB. I had my car in getting its oil changed the other day, and figured I'd test drive one of them, as the style reminds me of my old Isuzu Trooper. It did indeed drive nice, especially for a cheap car.

And that night, not 6 hours after, I got to see my first scion wreck. All three in the xB died. The driver and passenger were crushed to death by the whole of the engine compartment (they hit a guardrail square at 80 or so), and the kid in the back was ejected through the winshield into the barrier. It was, for lack of a better term, an unholy bloody mess. One of the worst I'd seen in a long time.

Most accidents are caused by reckless driving, speeding, or insufficient safety distance to the car in front of you. As jonsimon has said, the most important safety feature of any car is sitting behind the wheel. And from a certain speed up, no safety feature will save your life, whatever vehicle you are sitting in.

If these people had hit the guardrail with 80 mph in a SUV, the result wold have been the same

blisteringsilence wrote:

jonsimon wrote:

blisteringsilence wrote:

And that night, not 6 hours after, I got to see my first scion wreck. All three in the xB died. The driver and passenger were crushed to death by the whole of the engine compartment (they hit a guardrail square at 80 or so), and the kid in the back was ejected through the winshield into the barrier. It was, for lack of a better term, an unholy bloody mess. One of the worst I'd seen in a long time.

What in the world was he doing to hit a guardrail head on at 80? The most important safety feature is the one behind the wheel. And from experience, the ones behind the wheel of an SUV are often the dumbest.

You're way off base here. The ones behind the wheel of the little sports cars are the dumbest. And they have the least protection around them. That's why the insurance is so high for those vehicles.

And what were they doing? They were drinking, (likely) laughing, and going home from a party. The road they were on has a speed limit of 65, and people often greatly exceed it. Hell, I do it all the time. We THINK the driver passed out, and when the road curved, he kept going straight. Nothing to back that up, but it's a good guess.

B.Schuss wrote:

Most accidents are caused by reckless driving, speeding, or insufficient safety distance to the car in front of you. As jonsimon has said, the most important safety feature of any car is sitting behind the wheel. And from a certain speed up, no safety feature will save your life, whatever vehicle you are sitting in.

If these people had hit the guardrail with 80 mph in a SUV, the result wold have been the same

I agree that the most important safety feature is the driver. I disagree, however, that someone in an SUV would have had the same fate. I've never responded to an SUV that wrecked there, but I have to a pickup. Everyone was wearing their seat belts, and the highway police estimated the impact speed at 75. And they all lived. The vehicle sat high enough that the engine compartment, when deformed, shot the engine under the truck instead of into the passenger compartment.

The fact of the matter is that most traffic fatalities are not from collisions that happen at speeds less than 40 miles an hour. In a high speed collision, you want as much around you as possible.

It's why my kids will drive mid-70's caddies when they turn 16. I'll pay for the gas, its worth it for the piece of mind.

What about the piece of mind that comes from knowing if your kids get hit by a huge solid steel block of a car they'll have far less chance of surviving than if they get hit by a small, lightweight, deformable car.

oh by the way

blisteringsilence wrote:

Also, I don't know of you watched it or not, but at the end of the video, the journalists came to the same conclusion I've been touting since I joined this thread: The passengers, restrained, would not have survived the collision. There was MASSIVE passenger compartment intrusion in both of the cars they wrecked. At the least, the driver would have a crushed (flail) chest, and both legs severed/crushed.

If you want to survive a high speed impact, drive something with a lot of steel, and wear your seatbelt. That's all there is to it.

That's not what they said. They said that the amount of deceleration would've killed them. The way to decrease deceleration most effectively is by having crumple zones.

No matter what you drive, rapidly decelerating from higher speeds is something your internal organs can't cope with

Add to that the fact that, the more people driving big steel cars, SUVs, trucks etc. the more likely you are to be hit by one. I'd rather be hit by a Smart car - less mass, less momentum. It's all about lightweight cars with strong passenger cocoons - much like in F1 cars, which handle immense collisions and are made of carbon fibre.

blisteringsilence wrote:

If you want to survive a high speed impact, drive something with a lot of steel, and wear your seatbelt. That's all there is to it.

It seems to be coming down to the classic European vs. American way of dealing with problems. Americans predominantly wants to solve the problem for themselves ie. what's best for me (solve crime with guns, less welfare less taxes, solve auto deaths by having a huge tank of a car). European countries seems more willing to solve problems in terms of what's best for society, possibly due to being far smaller places. (ban guns, strong welfare, cars that are less dangerous for others as well as yourself). When you see a picture of an SUV crashed halfway through a small car do you think 'I'd better get an SUV to protect myself' or do you think 'I'd better get a small car so I don't kill anyone'? To prove the point, The European NCAP ratings are based of three things, adult occupant protection, child occupant protection and pedestrian protection. People really will judge a car by how dangerous it is for other people. Large steel tanks of cars are very good at killing people when they hit them.

Yes if everyone is driving a huge SUV you're probably worse off in a small car, but if lots of people get small cars everyone benefits.

PureFodder wrote:

It seems to be coming down to the classic European vs. American way of dealing with problems. Americans predominantly wants to solve the problem for themselves ie. what's best for me (solve crime with guns, less welfare less taxes, solve auto deaths by having a huge tank of a car). European countries seems more willing to solve problems in terms of what's best for society, possibly due to being far smaller places. (ban guns, strong welfare, cars that are less dangerous for others as well as yourself). When you see a picture of an SUV crashed halfway through a small car do you think 'I'd better get an SUV to protect myself' or do you think 'I'd better get a small car so I don't kill anyone'? To prove the point, The European NCAP ratings are based of three things, adult occupant protection, child occupant protection and pedestrian protection. People really will judge a car by how dangerous it is for other people. Large steel tanks of cars are very good at killing people when they hit them.

Yes if everyone is driving a huge SUV you're probably worse off in a small car, but if lots of people get small cars everyone benefits.

Exactly, we Americans just don't understand the definition of the word progress. Someday I'll be proud to be Canadian.