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Comment by douche | Hacker News Reader

I miss steel bodywork. This kind of "collision" in a 1980s vehicle would require a little hammering to pop out the resulting dent, and a little touch-up paint. Modern cars, it seems like you breathe on them, and they shatter and you're replacing entire quarter-panels or front-end assemblies.

Somebody backed into the front corner of my pickup truck at about 2 mph. Put a little crack into the plastic bumper, that continues into the front quarter panel. I'm glad I don't care about my vehicles looking 100% perfect, as I've no doubt that it'd be in the shop for a week, torn completely apart, and would cost a couple grand. It's ridiculous.

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As I mentioned elsewhere - if you get in an accident in an old car, you end up with a barely damaged car and a dead driver. In a new car, you end up with destroyed car and a driver without a scratch. I don't mean to be overdramatic, but I would rather have every single part in the front of my car to crumple and turn into dust in a low-speed accident, than get impaled on the steering column just because the frame of the car won't crumple under impact.

the less it crumples, the more you do

I mean, there has to be a happy medium. 5mph collisions won't kill or even injure anyone in any car. There's no reason for a car to take any damage at that speed. But yeah, 35+? Crumple away.

It just seems like it shouldn't have to be either/or. Is material science not advanced enough to find some combination of parts that can sustain a low speed impact with no damage but crumple safely in a higher-speed impact?

> Is material science not advanced enough to find some combination of parts that can sustain a low speed impact with no damage but crumple safely in a higher-speed impact?

For collisions, it's safe for the cabin to be fairly rigid to protect the occupants while crumpling the zones further away to absorb as much of the energy as possible before the impact reaches the soft, mushy humans.

It's a combination of physics and costs. Material science might be advanced enough, but the solution might not make economic sense; but if anyone has it, it would likely be Volvo.

I think this is actually the automation hardware being expensive. If you smack into a car with a normal bumper, everything might be fine, but if its full of radars and lidars, fender benders will be pricey.

I like not getting injured or killed because of crumple zones.

The thing is, modern vehicles are a lot safer, in part because of that crumpling.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g

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