Vehicle safety fixtures

Would any of us buy a car with out ABS brakes? I doubt it, as now they all have 'em the unit cost is very low.

How many lives could be saved if we all had doppler radar to stop tail-gating? (It could easilly be produced at relatively low cost...)

All those "we're safe 'cos we do it for a living" lorry drivers are constantly slipstreaming eachother and causing accidents...not to mention the rep's doing 90 with a mobile phone in one hand 6 foot from your bumper when you are a sensible distance from the car in front with nowhere to go.

Rant over....

I am 60 years old now. I wonder how I made it without ABS brakes! Waaaay back in my youthfull days (foolish days?) I drove a 1967 chevrolet camaro-NO ABS-NO AIR BAG-NO SEAT BELTS-HARD METAL DASH, ETC. ETC. I AM STILL HERE!!! James

Yeah..you and me are obviously great drivers....

It's the guy tailgating me at 90 while he's on the mobile I'm worried about!

I taught my daughter to cadence brake and drive on snow without ABS....I learned on two wheels... but not everyone has.

I see your argument that safety features don't necessarilly help as people will always exceed the vehicle's performance...

If you subtracted the total costs associated with air bags and seat belts, would you be talking about-say $5000 US dollars?

No! Probably nearer $ 500 per vehicle or less.

The actual cost of of building a car is relative stable...

e.g. It doesn't cost much more to build a big luxury car as a small 'budget' car.(After all they all have basically the same parts...body, engine, wheels, seats, assembly cost.

That's why some manufacturers don't want to move to the budget sector (less profit)

Also what is the cost in human and financial terms of death/injury?

Well I'm 65, driving for 45 years with but one minor incident,
(in the first year when I was still figuring it out), and that was
when the family bus had a solid rear axle, bias ply tires with canvas cord
and drum brakes on all four corners, 60/40 was considered a 'sporty` weight
distribution, and tread compounds were nothing like what we have now.

How much extra do you think I would pay, or how much I like to be, motoring
about with what amounts to a blasting cap staring me in the face.
(Last I heard, the 'bags` had killed some 50 or so people).

It should be a matter of choice, not legislation.

If you want safety, the 'nut behind the wheel` is the component
most in need if your attention.

Now thats what I am talking about! James

Hi Pragmatist,

I firmly believe that all the gadgets that can be added to a car in order to make it safer should be welcomed. You said "bags might have killed 50 people" but do you know how many more saved their lives? What sells more newspapers: a single person killed by the bag or 1,000 that have been saved by it?

To have been driving for many years without having had an accident probably means you are a good driver ... and also a lucky one!

Should we go back to the days in which a car was built like an armored vehicle: car almost intact after a crash, but all occupants dead? Why laminated windshields, if you can see trough a regular glass? Tube-less tires are not as fun as tires with tubes: they don't explode any more!

Some people do not use the safety belt, cause they believe they will not be able to escape from the car after an accident, but they are totally wrong: their suppositions are just that and not true facts.

Just an exmple: from a statistical point of view, a person that gets ejected from a car during an accident has 50 times more chances of getting severe injuries than a person using a seat belt.

The nut behind the wheel is certainly the component that should require more attention, but safety issues should not be a matter of choice!

On the other hand, what I really do not understand how governments allow companies to build cars with almost the same performances as a F1! Why would we have a car capable of reaching such speeds if limit is 60 miles/h? What is the sense of having 400 HP under the hood?

It depends probably. If the price difference were substantial, the sales would be higher than a car with all the safety built-in. If your actual question is, would people buy the unsafe car over the safe car (if the price were the same), I think most people would go for safety.

I say "most" because there are people who think that seat belts, air bags, ABS make the car more dangerous than those without them.

One of my colleagues had a head-on collision once. He got thrown out of the vehicle and onto the road. Luckily, there happened to be no other vehicles passing by so he just sort of staggered to the side of the road. Later, in the hospital, I told him he should have been wearing a seat belt.

"Hah!" he exclaimed, "if I had been wearing a seat belt, I'd be in a coffin now instead of a hospital bed!"

The concept of culling the stupid or bad drivers, does indeed have some appeal....The problem is that, unfortunately, the stupid also quite often kill the entirely innocent too.