Crashworthiness vs. Avoiding the Crash

Running head-on into a tree isn’t sound policy – even if you are wearing a helmet. Better to avoid running into the tree.

Then you won’t need the helmet.

The government – which is now the chief designer of cars – doesn’t see it this way. It insists that cars be designed to crash into trees – which has the perverse effect of making them more likely to.

They are built with thick windshield supports and high doors and slit-glass, in order to make the structure more able to absorb impact forces from all angles. But this reduces visibility – which increases the chances the driver won’t see something coming that he really ought to be aware of.

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This sometimes results in a test of his vehicle’s crashworthiness.

Wouldn’t it have been safer to have been able to see?

Driving a tank also tends to encourage passivity with regard to one’s safety. People tend to think: The car will protect me – so I don’t have to worry as much about protecting myself. This is foolish – even if the car is exceptionally crashworthy, which only means it takes the hit for the sake of protecting you.

Because it still takes the hit – which leaves you with a damaged and possibly totaled car. Which is likely to cost you time, hassle and money. The insurance mafia may raise your rates even if the crash wasn’t because of anything you did. The damage has still been done – and someone’s going to pay for it.

Rest assured, it won’t be the insurance mafia.

The fact is, we all pay for “crashworthy” cars – whether we cause crashes or not – because crashworthy cars cost a fortune to fix, even after “minor” wrecks – and are often just thrown away because they are too expensive to fix relative to what they are worth.

To be saaaaaaaaaaaaafe,  new cars are built heavy – structurally – but their exterior body panels are built light and thus, flimsy. They are almost paper thin – and can be bent by hand. You can imagine what happens when they are bent by a tree

Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety isn’t cheap.

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